
Qass 
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(S[l®.[?o(S©©[Lg[D(§[l i§ »(Q)7iX]@[^c 



THE LIFE 



OP 



BENJAMIN FMNKLIN. 



BY O. L. HOLLEY. 



NEW YORK: 
GEORGE F. COOLEDGE & BROTHER, 

PUBLISHERS AND BOOKSELLERS, 
323 PEARL STREET. 



/t^t' 



■ Q 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, 

By GEORGE F. COOLEDGE & BROTHER, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for 

the Southern District of New York. 



7 j^i/u 



STEREOTYPED BY C. C. SAVAGE, 
13 Chambers Street, N. Y. 



t^t\ 



PREFACE. 

Fkanklin's own narrative of his life extends only to the 27th of 
July, 1757, the day on which he reached London, on his first mission 
as agent of Pennsylvania to the British court. He was then but Uttle 
more than fifty-one years of age, so that nearly thirty-three years, em- 
bracing the most conspicuous portion of his career, was left, with the 
exception of occasional passages in his private correspondence, un- 
touched by his own graphic pen ; and though that sequel has been 
ably related by Dr. Sparks, yet the two performances, valuable as they 
are universally acknowledged to be, are both strictly narrative, embra- 
cing little but the recital of external occurrences. Well done, there- 
fore, as they are, still much of the most important portion of Franklin's 
actual life — that inner life which is made up of thoughts and feelings 
— the un«5een workings of the mind, the exercise of the affections, the 
development of character, and the progress of opinion — is either left 
out of the nan-ation, or is so briefly noticed, that, without access to his 
correspondence as well as his more elaborate productions, but scanty 
means are supplied for making up a full and just estimate of the whole 
man, the wide range of his philosophical inquiries, or of his accumula- 
tions of various knowledge, or of the number and value of his political 
writings, or of the vast amount of public business he transacted, or of 
the great extent and importance of his services to his country. 

This is deemed to be especially true in relation to his political servi- 
ces and writings prior to the American revolution. Few, comparatively, 
of the present generation, it is believed, are aware of the position which 
Franklin really occupied during the twenty years preceding our revolu- 
tionary struggle, or of the high rank he held as a public man, and the 
extent to which the principles and arguments on which that struggle was 
based, proceeded from his mind, or were unfolded and enforced by his 
pen. Indeed, as to the community of this day, generally, it may, I sus- 
pect, be fairly said, that little more is known of Franklin than that he 
was a remarkably ingenious tradesman, who, having a turn for philo- 



4 ▼REFACE. 

sophical experiments, particularly in electricity, discovered its identity 
with lightning ; and was, besides, an uncommonly sagacious man in 
regard to the prudent management of private affairs, who left behind 
him many wise maxims for the regulation of private life. 

Ths labors of Dr. Sparks have, it is true, shown how inadequate is 
such an idea of Franklin ; but the rich and ample collection of his wri- 
tings, made by that gentleman, is beyond the reach of the great majority 
of the people, especially of the younger portion of them, who, necessa- 
rily engaged in the toilsome occupations of life, have little leisure for 
study, and but limited means for supplying themselves with books. 

It is, therefore, for this portion of my countrymen that I have ven- 
tured to prepare this work. By condensing the account of some por- 
tions of Franklin's life, and by leaving to history the full recital of his 
political and diplomatic services, I have thought room might be found, 
within the compass of a single volume, to present a more complete, though 
still a compendious view of Franklin's life, character, and labors — ■ of 
what he was, as well as what he did, throughout his entire career — 
than has yet been furnished in a merely biographical form. I have 
thus endeavored to present a full-length portrait, though it be less than 
the size of life. In doing this, I have dwelt with more minuteness upon 
the methods by which he improved his powers, than upon the specific 
results attained, though these have not been overlooked — more upon 
the processes by which he qualified himself to be useful to his country 
and mankind, than upon the particular rewards which crowned his 
services ; and I have pursued this course, in the belief that the lessons 
his life presents would thus be rendered more available for the benefit 
of others, and be more durably impressed. 

O. L. HOLLEY. 

August 1, 1848. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 



Introductory Remarks.— Birth of Franklin.— Occupations of his Boy- 
hood.— Love of Reading page 9 

CHAPTER II. 

He becomes a Printer.— First Efforts as a Winter.— Collins.— Mode 
of forming his Style.— Way of Life.— Mental Habits . . .19 

CHAPTER IIL 
His Brothei-'s Newspaper.— DiflBculties with the Govenmient and 
with his Brother. — Leaves Boston for New York • . . .30 

CHAPTER IV. 
Proceeds to Philadelphia.— Incidents of his Journey . . . .37 

CHAPTER V. 

First Appearance in Philadelphia. — Employed by Keimer. — Noticed 
by Governor Keith, who m*ges him to open a Printing-Office. — Goes 
to his Father for Aid 42 

CHAPTER VL 

Reception at Home, and at his Brother's Office. — His Father refuses 
Aid, but treats him kindly. — Returns to Philadelphia. — Incidents 
by the Way 52 

CHAPTER VIL 
Connection with Collins. — Governor Keith's Professions. — Miss Read 61 

CHAPTER VIIL 

His Associates and Way of Life.— Keith induces him to go to Lon- 
don for Types, «Scc 71 

1* 



b CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Arrives in London. — Keith's Perfidy. — Mr. Denham. — Works at his 
Trade. — Ralph. — New Associates. — Sir Hans Sloaue . page 79 

CHAPTER X. 

His Way of Life. — New Lodgings. — An EngUsh Nun. — Art of Swim- 
ming. — Becomes Clerk to Mr. Deuliam 92 

CHAPTER XL 
Leaves London. — Isle of Wight. — Voyage Home .... 105 

CHAPTER XIL 

Changes in Philadelphia. — Letter to his Sister Jane. — Mercantile 
Affairs. — Death of Mr. Denliam. — Returns to his Trade. — Keimer 
and his Worlunen. — Jersey Paper-Moziey 120 

CHAPTER Xm. 

An'ives at Manhood. — His Opinions and Character. — Commences Bu- 
siness with Meredith. — The Junto 133 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Usefulness of the Junto. — Its Members. — Franklin's Industry. — Pri- 
vate Worship. — Establishes a Newspaper. — Its Chai-acter . . 145 

CHAPTER XV. 

Public Printing. — Partnership with Meredith dissolved. — Two Trae 
Friends. — Paper-Money. — Growing Reputation .... 160 

CHAPTER XVL 
Rivals in Business. — A Match-making Scheme fails. — He Marries.— 
A Library estabhshed. — Domestic Affairs. — Rehgious Views. — 
Plan of Self-discipline 176 

CHAPTER XVIL 

Project for the Moral Improvement of Society. — Poor Richard's Alma- 
nac. — Way to Wealth 200 

CHAPTER XVIIL 

His Newspaper Essays. — First Printing-OfRce in Charleston, South 
Carolina. — Defence of a young Clergyman. — Acquires several Lan- 
guages.— Visits his Relations.— Loses a Child.— Clerk of Assembly, 
Postmaster, Public Printer. — Citj- Improvements .... 220 



CONTENTS. / 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Whitefield.— Religious Views.— New Partnerships.— Promotion of 
Education and Science.— New Store.— Military Association.— The 
Quakers ^^^^ 237 

CHAPTER XX. 

Academy founded.— His Writings and Philosophical Pursuits.— Puh- 
lic Business.— Indian Treaty.— Colonial Postmaster-General.— Al- 
bany Convention.- Plan of Union.— Western Settlement.— Provin- 
cial Government — Crown Point 257 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Aids General Braddock.— Protects the Frontier.— Gnadenhutten.— 
Private Sentiments and Family Ties.— Military Arrangements.— 
Governor Denny.— Royal Society's Medal.— Proprietary Instruc- 
tions.— Lord Loudon.— First Mission to England . . . .284 

CHAPTER XXIL 

Grievances of Pennsylvania. — Remonstrance to Proprietaries. — Mis- 
representations Exposed.— Cause prepared for Hearing.— Excur- 
sions in England. — Family Connections. — Canada. — Visits Scotland. 
Mr. Strahan. — Mai'riage Proposed. — Miss Stevenson and her Stud- 
ies.— Political Abuse.— Pennsylvania's Share of Indemnity Money 
from Parhament 315 

CHAPTER XXIIL 

Pamphlet on Canada.— Pennsylvania Case decided.— Tour in Eng- 
land and Wales.— New Words.— Natural History.— Philosophical 
Topics.— Tour in Holland.— Art of Virtue.— Latent Heat.— Water 
vaporized by Electi'icity .—Points and Knobs.— Armonica.— Literary 
Honors. — Return Home 343 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Services Acknowledged.— Joui-ney North and East.— Mihtia BiU.— 
Conestogo Indians.— Imbecihty of Governor Pemi.— Franklin up- 
holds the Pubhc Authorit}^— Confutes his Enemies.— His Second 
Mission to England.— Origin of the Stamp- Act.— Dean Tucker.— 
Reception of Stamp- Act in America.— Examination before the 
House of Commons.— Stamp-Act Repealed.— Value of his Services. 
Old Scottish Tunes 371 



CONTENTS. 



CHAJ'TER XXV. 

Visit to the Continent. — Tnie Relations of America to England. — 
Visits Paris. — Changes in the Cabinet. — Lord Hillsborough. — Visit 
to Ireland. — Lightning rods for Powder Magazines. — He advises 
Fii-mness and Moderation in America. — The Hutchinson Letters. — 
LiefFectual Attempts at Conciliation. — Returns Home . page 417 

CHAPTER XXVL 

Death of his Wife. — Congress and Public Business. — Mission to 
France. — Residence at Paris. — Rctiirn to America. — Constitution 
of the United States.— Death and Character of Franldin . . . 4-17 



THE LIFE 



BEIJAim FRANKLII. 



CHAPTER I. 



HIS BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 



No man, probably, was ever more eminently and uni- 
formly successful, throughout the whole of a very long 
life, in attaining the chief objects of human pursuit, than 
Benjamin Franklin. Of humble origin, with no early 
opportunities of education beyond the simplest rudi- 
ments of knowledge, bred a tradesman, and compelled 
by the naiTowness of his circumstances to labor with 
his own hands for his daily bread, he nevertheless won 
for himself an ample estate, an illustrious reputation, and 
distinguished public honors. 

Nor was his success the result, in any proper sense, 
of what is commonly called accident, or mere good for- 
tune, any more than it was the consequences of advan- 
tages derived from high birth and powerful connections. 
It was, on the contrary, in a remarkable degree, the di- 
rect and visible effect of those causes, chiefly of a moral 
kind, which, for the encouragement of honest effort and 
virtuous enterprise, a wise Providence has established 
as the most worthy and legitimate means of attaining 



10 LIFE OP BmJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

success in this life ; for he was, through the favor with 
which that Providence regards such means, the founder 
and builder of his own prosperity. 

His success in the acquisition of property was the 
just recompense of his vigorous industry, his frugality, 
temperance, prudence, integrity, punctuality, enlight- 
ened and sound judgment, civil manners, respect for 
himself as well as for others, and his frank and manly 
deportment. All these qualities marked his conduct in 
the transaction of business, and in his general inter- 
course with his fellow-men ; and by securing general 
confidence, esteem, and good will, they were all instru- 
mental to his prosperity. 

His success in the pursuit of literature and science, 
and in the acquisition of fame as a philosopher, was 
also the consequence, at least in part, of some of the 
same qualities. For, although he could not have at- 
tained the high distinction he ultimately enjoyed as a 
writer and a philosopher, without the great natural abil- 
ities with which he was endowed, yet, without his ac- 
tive and persevering spirit, his industrious, frugal, tem- 
perate, methodical, and time-saving habits, even his 
great talents would have been far less available, and his 
philosophical genius could not have accomplished so 
much. 

His success in political affairs, and in the acquisition 
of public honors, was also the natural result, not merely 
of his talents associated with the other attributes al- 
ready mentioned, but also of additional causes inherent 
in his character — of his genuine public spirit, his zeal 
in applying himself to understand the real condition 
of public affairs, and the intelligence and fidelity with 
which he performed the duties of every public station 
in which he was placed ; of his thorough comprehen- 
sion of the political and civil rights and privileges of the 



BIRTH ANJJ PARENTAGE. 11 

people whom he served, his sagacious and sound views 
of their true interests, and the steady firmness with 
which he maintained and promoted those interests ; of 
his moderation, candor, and love of truth and justice ; 
his respect for law and for all lawful authority ; his 
stanch patriotism, and the unsurpassed moral weight 
and influence of his character. 

Such were the sources of his success, and the ele- 
ments of his greatness. Such were the causes of that 
steady, rapid, and almost wholly uninterrupted advance 
from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to renown, by 
which his career was so remarkably distinguished ; and 
which not only rendered that career, during its prog- 
ress, so honorable to himself and so useful to his coun- 
try and mankind, but have for ever sealed it as an exam- 
ple, especially to his own countrymen, rich, beyond 
parallel in lessons of practical wisdom for all, of every 
age, calling, and condition in life, public and private, in 
every coming generation. 

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachu- 
setts, on the 6th of January, old style, equivalent to the 
17th of that month, according to the present reckoning 
of time or the new style, in the year 1706. His father, 
Josiah Franklin, was a native of the village of Ecton, 
in Northamptonshire, England ; but he married his first 
wife, at an early age, in Banbury, in the neighboring 
county of Oxford, where he served his apprenticeship 
as a wool-dyer, with his uncle John Franklin, and where 
his first three children were born. In the year 1684, 
or early in 1685, in consequence of the intolerant and 
oppressive laws of that country respecting religion and 
public worship, he emigrated with his family to Boston, 
Massachusetts, where four more children were borne to 
him by the same wife. After her decease, he married 
Abiah Folger, born August 15th, 1667, the ninth child, 



12 LIFE OP BTOJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

but the seventh daughter, of Peter Folger and his wife 
Mary, in the town of Sherburn, on the island of Nan- 
tucket. By this second wife, Josiah Franklin had ten 
children, making the whole number seventeen ; ten of 
whom were sons, and seven daughters. Of these, Ben- 
jamin was the fifteenth child and the youngest son ; and 
in the very entertaining and instructive narrative of his 
life, written by himself as far as to the fifty-first year of 
his age, he states the interesting and uncommon fact, 
that, of those seventeen children, he had seen sitting to- 
gether at his father's table thirteen, who all grew up to 
years of maturity and were married. 

According to the wise and wholesome usage of those 
times, the nine elder sons, as they successively arrived 
at a proper age, were bound by their father as appren- 
tices to different trades, though by no means to the 
neglect of such instruction in the elements of useful 
knowledge, as could be imparted in those schools which 
it was the early care of the founders of New England 
to establish. 

With Benjamin, however, it was his father's original 
intention to take a different course. The boy had ex- 
hibited a rare facility in learning to read. His profi- 
ciency in this particular was so remarkable, that he 
states, at the age of sixty-five years, in his own account 
of his life, that he was unable to recollect a time when 
he could not read. His fondness for books, together 
with his eagerness for knowledge and other indications 
of bright parts, prompted a disposition in his father "to 
devote Benjamin, as the tithe of his sons, to the service 
of the church." With this view, Benjamin, at the age 
of eight years, was sent to a grammar-school, where 
his progress was such as to justify the impression his 
early docility had made upon his friends ; for, in less 
than a year, having risen from the middle of the class 



HJS SCHOOL-DAYS. 13 

in which he was first placed, to its head, he was trans- 
ferred to the next class above, from which he was to be 
removed to a still higher one, at the end of the year. 

But narrow circumstances and a large family soon 
made it apparent to his father, that the long course of 
study at the grammar-school and college, which would 
be requisite to give his son a suitable preparation for 
the contemplated profession, would involve an expense 
which he would be unable to meet, without very great 
difficulty, if at all. Besides, on looking more closely 
into the matter, he thought the proposed profession af- 
forded, as he remarked to a friend, in the presence of 
JBenjamin, ** but little encouragement to those who were 
educated for that line of life." These considerations 
induced his father to abandon his original design ; and 
taking the boy from the grainmar-school before a year 
had expired, he placed him in a school devoted exclu- 
sively to writing and arithmetic, kept by a Mr. George 
Brownwell, who had gained much reputation as a teacher 
of those two essential branches of a practical business 
education, and who, as Franklin himself testifies, was 
" a skilful master, and successful in his profession, em- 
ploying the mildest and most encouraging methods." 
In this school the lad became an excellent penman ; but, 
to cite his own confession, he " entirely failed in arith- 
metic." 

Benjamin appears to have remained under the tuition 
of Mr. Brownwell about twelve months, or the greater 
part of his ninth year. This was the last of his going 
to school ; for, on his reaching his tenth year, his father 
transferred him to his own business, as a tallowchandler 
and soapboiler, to which business, though not bred to it, 
his father had betaken himself, on finding that, in the 
community where he had fixed his new home, his trade 
as a dyer, to which he had been regularly trained in 

2 



14 LIFE OP i^>JJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

England, would not yield him employment enough for 
the support of his family. Benjamin's occupation, now, 
was cutting candlewicks and fitting them to the moulds, 
tending shop, and running upon errands. 

These employments, however, were exceedingly dis- 
tasteful to him ; and a strong desire sprung up in him 
to go to sea. Having an active, enterprising spirit, and 
living near the water, he often resorted to it for both 
amusement and exercise, and grew familiar with it and 
fond of it. He very early made himself an expert and 
bold swimmer, and so dexterous in managing a boat, 
that whenever he and his playmates were enjoying 
themselves in that way, he was " commonly allowed to 
govern, especially in case of difficulty." Indeed, in the 
various enterprises in which he and his young comrades 
were engaged, he was generally the leader. One of 
these enterprises he relates, " as it shows," to use his 
own words, " an early projecting public spirit, though 
not then justly directed;" and inasmuch as it serves to 
exemplify that ready ingenuity in devising means to 
overcome difficulties, which subsequently developed it- 
self to such a degree as to constitute one of the marked 
traits of his character, his ov/n sprightly account of the 
performance in question is here copied. 

** There was," he relates, '' a salt-marsh which bound- 
ed part of the millpond, on the edge of which, at high- 
water, we used to stand to fish for minnows. By much 
trampling we had made it a mere quagmire. My pro- 
posal was to build a wharf there for us to stand upon ; 
and I showed my comrades a large heap of stones, which 
were intended for a new house near the marsh, and 
which would very well suit our purpose. Accordingly, 
in the evening, when the workmen were gone home, I 
assembled a number of my playfellows, and we worked 
diligently, like so many emmets, sometimes two or three 



EARLY ENTERPRISE. 15 

to a stone, till we brought them all, to make our little 
wharf. The next morning the workmen were surprised 
at missing the stones, which had formed our wharf In- 
quiry was made after the authors of this transfer : we 
were discovered, complained of, and corrected by our 
fathers ; and, though I demonstrated the utility of our 
work, mine convinced me that tliat which was not honest, 
could not he truly useful T 

Benjamin continued in his father's shop, variously 
employed as already stated, for two years, but with a 
continually growing dislike to his situation ; and as his 
brother John, who had been trained to the same busi- 
ness, had recently married and gone to Rhode Island, 
to establish himself there as a chandler, on his own ac- 
count, the probability seemed, to the impatient Benja- 
min, fast verging to certainty that he was fated perma- 
nently to this calling. His father, who had not failed 
to observe his strong repugnance to this employment, 
and his restiffness at the prospect of continuing in it, 
began to feel alarmed lest his youngest, like Josiah, one 
of his elder sons, should gratify his inclination by break- 
ing away clandestinely and going to sea. Such an event 
would have been a great grief to his parents ; and to 
prevent it, his father earnestly sought to ascertain what 
occupation would be most likely to suit his disposition, 
and keep him in content, safety, and usefulness, at 
home. With this view, he frequently took the lad out 
with him to the workshops of the different classes of 
mechanics in town, in the hope of discovering, in this 
way, the leading inclination of his son, in reference to a 
point of such grave concern as that of fixing on a pur- 
suit for life. 

These visits to the workshops were very gratifying to 
the inquisitive and observant spirit of young Benjamin. 
In speaking of them, in his own narrative of his life, he 



16 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

declares that '* it was ever after a pleasure to him to see 
a good workman handle his tools." He adds, also, the 
more important remark, that he derived from these vis- 
its the benefit of knowing how to handle some of those 
tools himself; sufficiently well, at least, to execute va- 
rious small pieces of work about his own premises, when 
a regular-bred mechanic was not conveniently to be pro- 
cured ; and especially did he thus secure for himself the 
still more material advantage of being able to construct 
various kinds of apparatus, for aiding his philosophical 
investigations, at the moment when some scientific con- 
ception, the principle it involved, and the experiment 
which would illustrate it, were all fresh and clear in his 
mind. 

This testimony is instructive and valuable. The ob- 
servations made, and the hints received, during those 
visits of the hoy, worked like leaven among the thoughts 
of the man. The history of Franklin's philosophical 
inquiries, no less than his career as a tradesman, abounds 
with evidence of his mechanical ingenuity, and of the 
dexterity with which he could contrive and arrange the 
apparatus necessary to test the correctness of new ideas 
as they occurred to him. Thus, with him, speculation 
and experiment were enabled to go forward hand in 
hand ; inquiry was facilitated ; time was not vainly con- 
sumed in vague untested conjecture ; conclusions were ^ 
not only reached more promptly, but were rendered 
more exact and satisfactory ; and the progress of actual 
knowledge was expedited. It seems, moreover, easy to 
discern, in the circumstances mentioned, the origin, at 
least in part, of that striking and characteristic tendency 
of his mind, to give a practical turn to his most abstruse 
theoretical ideas, and to regard as the best criterion of the 
value of all philosophical studies, the extent to which 
they can be rendered subservient to the wants, the com- 



MECHANICAL INGENUITY. 17 

forts, the improvement, and the happiness of his fellow- 
men. 

The choice of a trade, which, as the result of the walks 
among the artisans of Boston, the father made for the 
son, was that oi cutler ; and in pursuance of that choice, 
Benjamin was placed for a short time, by way of trial, 
with his cousin Samuel Franklin, son of his uncle Ben- 
jamin, brought up to the business in London, and recent- 
ly established in Boston. But the sum demanded for 
the apprentice's fee, the father thought unreasonable ; 
and it displeased him so much, that he took his son 
home again. 

So this project for the welfare of the son, to which 
his father had been led by somewhat artificial means, 
fell to the ground ; and the trade which Benjamin actu- 
ally followed — that of a printer — was shortly after se- 
lected for the same general reason, which had originally 
prompted in his father the desire to devote him to the 
clerical profession ; a reason founded on inclinations 
and capacities, which spontaneously developed them- 
selves, when there was nothing to interfere with the sim- 
ple force of nature in the one, or to bias the judgment 
of the other ; and which were, therefore, a safer guide 
to the choice of a pursuit for life. That reason was 
what Franklin himself called his "bookish inclination." 
From his earliest childhood he had been " passionately 
fond of reading;" and the little sums of money he ob- 
tained were all expended in purchasing books. His first 
acquisition, he says, was a cheap set of Bunyan's works; 
and when he had read these, he sold them, that he might, 
with the proceeds, procure others, especially works of 
history and biography. The few books that belonged 
to his father contained little but polemical divinity, a 
very unattractive sort of reading to most people, espe- 
cially the young ; but Benjamin's appetite was keen 
2* 



18 LIFE OF bKjJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

enough for the greater part even of that. Fortunately, 
however, he found also, on the same shelves, TlutarcVs 
J/i?;c5, which he read with more avidity as well as profit; 
An Essay on Projects, by Daniel De Foe, an English- 
man, the author of the famous Adventures of Robinson 
Crusoe; and An Essay to do Good, by the celebrated 
Cotton Mather of Boston. In speaking of these works, 
he intimates the belief that the reading of the two essays 
mentioned, gave him a turn of thinking which probably 
exerted an influence upon some of the principal events 
of his subsequent life. 



APPRENTICED TO HIS BROTHER. 



19 



CHAPTER II. 

HE BECOMES A PRINTER. 

Benjamin was now twelve years old. There being 
no type-foundry in the colony, his brother James, during 
the preceding year, 1717, had been to England to pro- 
cure the necessary apparatus for a printing-office, and 
on his return had established himself in Boston, as a 
printer; and his father, still anxious lest Benjamin, in 
his unsettled and discontented state of mind, might 
gratify that " hankering for the sea," which continued 
as strong in him as ever, was now very urgent to have 
him regularly apprenticed to James. As this propo- 
sal was far more agreeable to the lad than remaining 
in the chandler's shop, he at length, after much solicita- 
tion, yielded to the wishes of his father ; and in the 
course of the year he was duly indentured as an ap- 
prentice to his brother, so to continue till he should be 
twenty-one years old, and, for the closing year of the 
term, to be paid the full wages of a journeyman. 

He took readily to his new employment, and soon be- 
came so expert in it as to be exceedingly useful to his 
brother. A freer access to a wider range of reading 
helped, very materially, to increase his content with the 
situation, which thus contributed to gratify one of his 
strongest propensities. His intercourse with the ap- 



20 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

prentices of booksellers, gave him more frequent op- 
portunities to borrow ; and he had the prudence and 
good sense to preserve this privilege, by losing no time 
in reading the books thus obtained, and promptly return- 
ing them in good condition. "Often," says he, "I sat 
up in my chamber reading the greatest part of the night, 
when the book was borrowed in the evening to be re- 
turned in the morning, lest it should be found missing;" 
and he fiirther relates that he was greatly favored, in 
this particular, by the kindness of a neighboring mer- 
chant, " an ingenious and sensible man," named Mat- 
thew Adams, who, in his frequent visits to the print- 
ing-office, finding his attention peculiarly attracted to 
Benjamin, invited him to see his library, and of his own 
accord proffered him the loan of any books it contained, 
which he might wish to read. 

At this period, moreover, as he relates, a strong in- 
clination for poetry took possession of him, and he wrote 
some small pieces. His brother James, thinking it 
might be directed to the advantage of his business, en- 
couraged the propensity. Of the performances of our 
apprentice-muse, about that time presented to the pub- 
lic, two ballads only are specially named. One of them, 
entitled, '* The Light-House Tragedy,''^ recorded and 
bewailed the shipwreck of one Captain Worthilake, 
with two daughters ; and the other sung the capture of 
a truculent pirate named Teach, but better known to 
fame by the more impressive and appropriate appella- 
tion of Black-Beard. He pronounces them *' wretched 
stuff;" but they were printed, and the author, not known 
as such, however, except only to himself and his brother, 
was sent forth to hawk them about the streets. The tra- 
gedy "sold prodigiously," for the disaster was recent, 
well known, and affecting. His father, however, soon 
took down the vanity of the young ball ad- writer, by 



MENTAL HABITS. 21 

his plain and searching criticism, and by telling him 
that " verse-makers were generally beggars." 

Though rescued thus from the perils of rhyme, he 
felt nevertheless a strong propensity to employ his pen; 
and the method, which, incited by a generous ambition, 
he now pursued in order to attain a ready command of 
his mother-tongue, and to form that clear, flowing, and 
happy prose style, for which he afterward became dis- 
tinguished, and which proved one of the most efficient 
means of advancing his fortunes, was so well conceived, 
so practical, so remarkable in a youth but little more 
than twelve years old, and for that reason among others 
so valuable as an example, that a somewhat particular 
account of the method ought not to be omitted. 

One of Benjamin's most intimate companions at this 
time, was another " bookish lad" by the name of John 
Collins. They both had an itch for arguing, which 
grew into a disjDUtatious habit, and led to frequent and 
eager struggles for victory. This habit, as he admits, is 
by no means a desirable one, and he subsequently cor- 
rected it in himself entirely; but it served, at the time, to 
stimulate him to the assiduous employment of his pen, 
and was, in part, the means, aided again by his judicious 
father, of leading him to the practice which he soon re- 
sorted to, for improving his style and enlarging his com- 
mand of language. 

In the course of his discussions with Collins, the old 
question was started, whether the capacities of females 
fitted them for the more profound and abstruse sciences, 
and whether such sciences should be made part of their 
course of study, either for the sake of positive acquire- 
ment, or for the purpose of mental discipline. Collins 
took the negative side of the question, and Benjamin 
the affirmative, the latter, in his own account of the con- 
test, adding — " perhaps a little for dispute's sake." They 



22 LIFE OF B^JAMIN FRANKLIN. 

commenced the discussion orally; but parting before 
the debate was ended, and not being likely to meet again 
for some little time, Benjamin embraced the occasion to 
write out his arguments and send them to Collins, who 
replied in the same way. 

Several communications on each side had been made 
in this form, when they fell under the eye of Benjamin's 
father, who, without touching at all on the merits of the 
question, availed himself of the opportunity to com- 
ment freely on the performances of the young dispu- 
tants, showing his son, as he candidly states, that, al- 
though he was more accurate in his spelling and punc- 
tuation, than his antagonist, yet that the latter much ex- 
celled him in elegance of expression, method, and per- 
spicuity, and supporting his criticisms by reference to 
various passages. Benjamin saw that his father was 
right, and instead of being either offended, or discour- 
aged, resolved to make more vigorous efforts to improve 
his manner of writing. 

Fortunately for his purpose, about this time he came 
across a stray volume containing some of the celebrated 
essays of the Spectator, nowe of which had he ever seen 
before. This book he purchased, read the essays again 
and again, and having good sense and taste enough to 
perceive and admire their various merits, the desire to 
form his style on the model they presented, took full 
possession of him. The method, already alluded to, 
which he pursued to attain his end, he describes as fol- 
lows : — 

" I took some of the papers, and making short hints 
of the sentiments in each sentence, laid them by a few 
days, and then without looking at the book, tried to com- 
plete the papers again, by expressing each hinted senti- 
ment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed 
before, in any suitable words that should occur to me. 



MODE OF FORMING HIS STYLE. 23 

Then I compared mi/ Spectator with the original, dis- 
covered some of my faults, and corrected them." 

This practice soon disclosed to him how compara- 
tively limited was his command of language, and the 
reason of that deficiency in variety, force, and elegance 
of expression, which his father had so faithfully pointed 
out. These defects, he believed, would by this time 
have been considerably less, if he had continued his 
former practice of making verses ; inasmuch as the con- 
stant necessity of finding words not only to express the 
intended sentiment, but to suit the adopted metre, would 
have enlarged his vocabulary, and given him at the same 
time a readier command over it. In this convictioij, he 
next proceeded to turn some of the tales of the Spec- 
tator into verse ; and then, after waiting long enough to 
forget the language of the original, turn his verse into 
his own prose. 

This course .of proceeding he pursued for the pur- 
pose of improving his power, variety, and fluency of 
expression. To acquire the habit of an appropriate and 
skilful arrangement of his thoughts, in composing, he 
" sometimes jumbled his collections of hints into con. 
fusion," and then, when their original order had been 
forgotten, he would, without recurring to the original, 
methodize them according to his own judgment, and 
write them out again, in full, in the best and fittest lan- 
guage he could draw from his own store. By faithfully 
persevering in these practices, and comparing his own 
performance with his model, his discernment was quick- 
ened for the detection of his faults and the amendment 
of them. His pains, moreover, were rewarded, not only 
by the gratifying consciousness of progress, but also by 
sometimes having the pleasure of fancying that in cer- 
tain particulars of small consequence, as he modestly 
remarks, he had been fortunate enough to improve the 



24 LIFE OF H^JAMIN FRANKLIN. 

method, or the lant^uage, of his model. This encour- 
aged him to think that he ** might in time, come to be 
a tolerable English writer," of which, he declares, he 
was " extremely ambitious." 

These efforts, so ingeniously devised and so resolutely 
continued, were crowned with marked success. The 
hours devoted to these exercises in composition, and to 
reading, were, to use his own words, " at night, or be- 
fore work began in the morning, or on Sundays, when 
I continued to be in the printing-house ; avoiding as 
much as I could, the constant attendance at public wor- 
ship, which my father used to exact of me, when I was 
under his care, and which I still considered a duty, 
though I could not find time to practise it." In this last 
particular he doubtless erred ; for his duty to his Maker 
was of higher moment than even the acquisition of a good 
style, or the entertainment and instruction he found in 
his books. But the honest frankness of his confession, 
and his express recognition of the duty, may be allow- 
ed, perhaps, as some compensation for his fault, and was 
at least an amiable trait in his character. Let the 
youthful reader shun the fault, and imitate the virtue. 

His brother James was at this time unmarried, and 
hired board and lodging for himself and his apprentices. 
This circumstance led to another proceeding, on the part 
of Benjamin, of no little interest as indicating the force 
of his character, and his self-directing power. In his 
sixteenth year, or thereabouts, he met with a book by 
one Tryon, in favor of an exclusively vegetable diet. 
The book made such an impression upon young Ben- 
jamin, that he determined to renounce meat of every 
sort, and live on vegetable food alone. This rejection 
of flesh, besides being considered as a mere freak, for 
which he received frequent chiding, did in fact put the 
family where he boarded to some inconvenience. This 



VEGETABLE DIET. 25 

he wished to avoid, for he had a manly obliging dispo- 
sition ; and having informed himself of Tryon's mode 
of preparing several dishes, of such articles as were in 
common use and easily procured, particularly potatoes, 
rice, corn-meal for hasty-pudding, and some others, he 
then told his brother that if he would give him, every 
week, half the money paid for his board, he would board 
himself. The proposal was instantly accepted, and the 
benefits he derived from this arrangement shall be stated 
in his own words : — 

*' I presently found," says he, " that I could save half 
what he paid me. This was an additional fund for buy- 
ing books ; but I had another advantage in it. My 
brother and the rest going from the printing-house to 
their meals, I remained there alone, and despatching 
presently my light repast, (which was often no more 
than a biscuit, or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins, 
or a tart from the pastry-cook's, and a glass of water), 
had the rest of the time, till their return, for study; in 
which I made the greater progi'ess, from that greater 
clearness of head and quicker apprehension, which gen- 
erally attend temperance in eating and drinking. Now 
it was, that, being on some occasion made ashamed of 
my ignorance in figures, which I had twice failed of 
learning when at school, I took up Cocker's Arithmetic, 
and went through the whole by myself, with the greatest 
ease. I also read Seller and Sturney's book on navi- 
gation, which made me acquainted with what little ge- 
ometry it contains." 

About the same period he read attentively the great 
work of Locke On The Human Understanding, and an- 
other work having mainly the character of a treatise on 
logic, produced by the celebrated society of Port Royal, 
in France, and entitled, The Art of Thinking. 



26 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

At this period, also, a treatise on English gi'ammar 
came in his way, and he had the good sense and indus- 
try to avail himself of it, to obtain a more full and sys- 
tematic understanding of that subject, than he yet pos- 
sessed ; an acquisition indispensable to his becoming, 
what was then the leading aim of his ambition, a good 
writer. As the same book also contained short trea- 
tises on rhetoric and logic, he possessed himself of 
what instruction they had to impart on those subjects. 

The last-named treatise, indeed, proved to be, to him, 
by no means unimportant ; inasmuch as it wrought a 
considerable change in one of his mental habits. The 
treatise on logic closed with a dispute, regularly drawn 
out in the form of a dialogue, and conducted in the 
Socratic method ; that is, the method of conducting a 
discussion, which the ancient Athenian philosopher, 
Socrates, was accustomed to pursue. It may gratify 
some of the youthful readers, for whom this narrative 
of the life of Franklin is principally intended, to say a 
few words of the method referred to. 

In ancient times, when the art of printing was not 
known, the great task of instruction was performed for 
the most part orally. Sometimes the teacher communi- 
cated his knowledge in systematic discourses, the pupils 
being mere listeners; and sometimes a conversational 
method was adopted, the teacher being the principal 
speaker, but permitting and inviting his pupils to put 
questions, and giving them categorical answers. 

Socrates, the most successful teacher, as well as the 
wisest man, of his time, was not only accustomed to use 
the form of dialogue, and to give it the freest conversa- 
tional turn, but he had, also, a peculiar method of lead- 
ing his disciples and followers to the most strenuous ex- 
ercise of their oton faculties, in receiving the opinions 
and the knowledge he wished to impart. Instead of 



SOCRATIC METHOD OF REASONING. 27 

making himself the only speaker, he was frequently not 
even the principal one ; but, by a succession of ques- 
tions, so framed as gradually to open a subject in all its 
parts and bearings, and, when finally contemplated to- 
gether, to present a complete analysis of it, he led the 
minds of his pupils, step by step, to reason out for 
themselves the conclusions, to which he sought to bring 
them. The most peculiar and striking feature of this 
method, as Socrates employed it, was the framing of 
his questions, or interrogative propositions, in such man- 
ner as to draw from the pupil, or the antagonist, in the 
first instance, concessions, or affirmations, which, as the 
investigation proceeded, it was soon found, had been un- 
warily made, and must be materially modified, or aban- 
doned, and the point to which they related be taken up 
again at the beginning, in order to amend the reasoning by 
the help of the new lights shed upon the subject, from 
the various unexpected relations in which it had been 
presented. In this way, the just conclusions aimed at, 
were at length reached ; while, in the process, besides 
becoming possessed, in the most exact and perfect man- 
ner, of the truths which had been the main objects of 
pursuit, the pupil had also been taught the value of cir- 
cumspection and caution ; the necessity of discrimina- 
tion, of not taking too many things for granted, of a 
patient and faithful examination of each argument in its 
various bearings and connexions ; in short, his mind had 
been subjected to a most invigorating and wholesome 
discipline. 

Soon after his perusal of the treatise on logic, Ben- 
jamin procured an English translation of Xenophon's 
Memorahilia of Socrates, which contains many speci- 
mens of the mode of investigation above described ; and, 
as he declares, becoming charmed with it, he adopted 
it ; dropped his habit of abrupt contradiction and posi- 



S8 LIFE OF I^RjAMIN FRANKLIN. 

tive argumentation, and assumed the much better man- 
ner of the modest inquirer. 

As the best things, however, are liable to abuse, so 
this Socratic method of conducting an argument may, 
by an acute and skilful disputant, be made the means of 
obtaining unfair advantages over one, who, though less 
expert, may, at the same time, have the more just cause, 
be the sounder thinker of the two, and much the wiser 
man. Franklin confesses, that in his youthful zeal and 
fondness for disputation, he sometimes used his new 
weapon more for the sake of victory, than truth ; that 
in his eager practice of it, he acquired an adroitness 
that enabled him occasionally to draw persons, superior 
to himself in knowledge, into admissions, which, in- 
volving consequences they did not foresee, gave him 
sometimes a nominal triumph, which neither himself nor 
his cause deserved. It is, however, in this case, as in 
various others which occurred in his experience, grati- 
fying to find, that his clear good sense and general rec- 
titude of mind enabled hira at last, to separate the use 
from the ahuse, and rejecting the latter, to retain the 
modest and deferential manner of discussion, which is, in 
truth, the most legitimate effect of the method in ques- 
tion, and the one which, among others, its original in- 
ventor intended it should chiefly produce. 

Franklin states, that after practising it a few years, 
he laid it aside, retaining only the habit of expressing 
himself in modest terms, when advancing sentiments 
open to dispute ; never using the word *' certainly," or 
" undoubtedly," or any other having an air of posi- 
tiveness ; but employing the phrase " I conceive," or 
i**I apprehend," or "it seems to me," and the like ; a 
habit which, he takes the occasion to say, he found very 
advantageous, in his subsequent experience, whenever 
he sought to obtain the assent of others to his opinions, 



POSITIVENESS IN ARGUMENT. 29 

or his measures. In this he was doubtless correct ; and 
he justly deems this point so important, that he presses 
it with much earnestness. His remarks are so pithy 
and so well worthy of attention, that they are here re- 
peated : — 

" As the chief ends of conversation are to inforin, or 
to he informed,, to please, or to persuade, I wish well- 
meaning and sensible men would not lessen their power 
of doing good, by a positive assuming manner, that sel- 
dom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to 
defeat most of those purposes for which speech was 
given to us. In fact, if you wish to instruct others, a 
positive dogmatical manner in advancing your senti- 
ments, may occasion opposition and prevent a candid 
attention. If you desire instruction and improvement 
from others, you should not at the same time express 
yourself fixed in year present opinions. Modest and 
sensible men, who do not love disputation, will leave 
you undisturbed in the possession of your errors. In 
adopting such a manner, you can seldom expect to 
please your hearers, or to obtain the concurrence you 
desire. Pope judiciously observes — 

" Men must be taught, as if you taught them not ; 
And things unknown, proposed as things forgot." 

He also recommends it to us — 

" To speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence." 

3* 



LIFE OF I^RJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



CHAPTER III. 
HIS CONNECTION WITH HIS BROTHER'S NEWSPAPER. 

On the 21st of August, 1721, James Franklin began 
publishing a newspaper. It was called *' The Ncio E?ig- 
land Courant ;"" and it is spoken of by Dr. Franklin, in 
his own narrative of his life, as being the second news- 
paper, '' The Boston News-Letter" having been the 
first, which appeared in America. In this latter par- 
ticular, however, writing as he was, from memory, fifty 
years after the event mentioned, he mistook in his recol- 
lection. Dr. Sparks, the learned and accurate editor of 
the latest and by far the fullest and most valuable col- 
lection of Dr. Franklin's writings, has shown that James 
Franklin's newspaper was not the second, but the 
fourth^ which made its appearance in this country ; the 
first being, as above stated, the Boston News-Letter, 
commenced April 24, 1704 ; the second one, the Boston 
Gazette, started on the 21st of December, 1719 ; and 
the tJiird, the Atnerican Weekly Mercury, first issued 
December 22, 1719, at Philadelphia. 

Some of James Franklin's friends urged him, very 
strenuously, not to undertake the publication of a news- 
paper, there being already, as they thought, quite as 
many as could find support. But the people of this 
country, whether colonial, or independent, have always 



HE BEGINS TO WRITE FOR THE PAPER. 31 

been much addicted to newspapers ; and when, in 1771, 
Franklin was recounting these early incidents, he took 
occasion to state, that the number of this class of publi- 
cations had then increased to not less than twenty-five. 

Among the acquaintances of James were several, who 
occasionally furnished him with communications, which 
enhanced the value of his paper, and helped to extend 
its circulation. As these persons frequently resorted 
to the printing-office, the conversation and the favorable 
reception of their articles by the public, stimulated 
Benjamin to make trial of his own pen in the same way. 

To avoid all objection from his brother on account of 
his youth, or for any other reason, he wrote his pieces in 
a disguised hand, and at night shoved them under the 
printing-office door. The first piece having been found 
by James, he showed it to some of the contributors 
mentioned, whose remarks upon the performance, made 
of course without any suspicion of the writer and in 
his hearing, were such as gave him, to use his own 
words, " the exquisite pleasure of finding that it met 
with their approbation ; and that, in their different 
guesses at the author, none were named but men of some 
character for learning and ingenuity." He modestly 
adds, that he was probably lucky in his judges, and 
that they were not really as skilful critics as he then 
supposed them to be. 

But, whatever may have been the discernment of his 
critics, the success of his first effort was so gratifying, 
that, carefully guarding his secret, he continued in the 
same way to furnish communications, which proved alike 
acceptable to the publisher of the paper and its readers; 
until, as he relates, he had exhausted his stock of ideas 
for such essays ; when he avowed his authorship, and 
thereupon found himself the object of increased regard 
and consideration from his brother's acquaintances. 



82 LIFE OF ll^JAMIN FRANKLIN. 

But, alas ! human nature is weak ; and if prophets 
are without their due honor anywhere, it is among their 
own kin and in their own house. James seems to have 
been not a little nettled by this success of his younger 
brother as a writer. Though he sought to disguise so 
unamiable a feeling, under the worthier one of an appre- 
hension, that the commendation bestowed on his appren- 
tice might make him too vain, and though there may 
have been some reason for such apprehension, yet the 
harsh and bitter temper, which, about this time, began 
to mark his treatment of Benjamin, but too plainly 
evinced that his brotherly affection had become soured 
by some drops of envy. Instead of tempering his au- 
thority as a master, with kindness, and with that solici- 
tude for the improvement of his apprentice, which 
ought, indeed, to be cherished in all such cases, and 
which, in this instance, were rendered still more oblig- 
atory by the ties of nature, he exercised his power op- 
pressively ; sometimes, in the excitement of passion, 
beating his brother, and sometimes exacting from him 
services which were humiliating. 

Their differences were frequently laid before their 
father, a man of clear head, strong sense, and sound 
judgment ; and the fact that his decision was generally 
in Benjamin's favor, is good evidence of the injustice of 
the elder brother. From a remark which Dr. Franklin 
makes in connexion with his account of these matters, it 
is obvious that James's treatment of him at the period 
in question, was the means of thus early wakening in 
his mind, that deep-felt abhorrence of arbitrary power 
in all its forms, which was so fully developed at a later 
period of his career, and which became one of the most 
energetic and controlling emotions of his soul. 

Of the communications which appeared from time to 
time in the New England Courant, not a few were of a 



ARBITRARY ACTS OF THE GOVERNMENT. 33 

strongly marked satirical character ; aiming not merely 
in a general way at fashionable follies, or the absurdi- 
ties of opinion and manners presenting themselves in 
the community at large ; but applying the lash to vari- 
ous classes and professions, not omitting either the po- 
litical, or clerical ; exposing abuses in both civil and ec- 
clesiastical administration, and hitting hard. One of 
these pieces, which appeared in the summer of 1722^, 
gave such offence to the colonial Assembly, that James 
Franklin, the publisher, was brought before that body, 
on the Speaker's warrant, severely reprimanded, and 
sent to prison for one month. It was supposed he might 
have escaped the sentence, in his own person, if he 
would have disclosed the writer of the offensive article; 
but that he manfully refused to do. Benjamin was also 
taken up and examined before the council ; and though 
he also refused to make any disclosure, he was only ad- 
monished and dismissed : on the ground, as he supposed, 
that an apprentice could not justly be required to be- 
tray his master's secrets. Perhaps his youth, for he 
was only sixteen years old, also served to render the 
council less rigorous. 

During the confinement of James, the management 
of the paper devolved on Benjamin, who, notwithstand- 
ing their private differences, magnanimously resented 
the harsh usage his brother received from the public au- 
thorities, and gave them, in the paper, to use his own 
words, " some rubs, which his brother took very kindly; 
while others began to consider him in an unfavorable 
light, as a youth that had a turn for libelling and satire." 

The proceedings of the colonial government, on this 
occasion, seem to have been, in truth, not a little arbi- 
trary and oppressive. James Franklin was aiTaigned, 
subjected to examination, and sent to prison, on a mere 
general accusation, with no specific allegation of the 



34 LIFE OF Bl^ 



AMIN FRANKLIN. 



subject-matter of his offence, no exhibition of legal 
proofs to sustain the accusation, and no trial before a 
judicial tribunal ; and when his term of imprisonment 
expired, his discharge was accompanied by an act still 
more arbitrary and tyrannical, if possible, than even his 
commitment; for the Assembly made an order that 
** James Franklin should no longer print the newspaper 
called the New England Courant." 

When James obtained his liberation, having come to 
consider how he should manage to continue the publi- 
cation of his newspaper, without a direct and bold in- 
fraction of the assembly's order, which would be cer- 
tain to bring upon him the arbitrary power of that body 
with increased severity, some of his friends advised 
that he should attain his object by giving his paper a 
new name. To this, however, there were various ob- 
jections, some of them having relation to the legal ef- 
fect on his subscription list, and others arising from 
considerations of convenience ; so that he adopted a 
different course, and one which resulted in consequences 
of great importance to his apprentice-brother. The 
title of the paper remained unchanged, but its publica- 
tion was continued in Benjamin's name; and to protect 
himself against the charge of disobeying the mandate 
of the assembly, by printing his paper through the 
agency of his sei'vant, as the law would consider it, 
James resorted to the expedient of surrendering to Ben- 
jamin his old indenture, with a discharge endorsed upon 
it, to be kept for exhibition in case of need ; while, to 
enable him to retain the services of his apprentice, a 
new indenture, for the residue of the term, was execu- 
ted, but kept secret. This was truly, as Franklin calls 
it, ** a flimsy scheme ;" but, though legally void, it was 
adopted, and the paper was printed for several months 
on this footing. 



RENEWED DISSENSIONS. 85 

Before long, however, new dissensions arose between 
the master and his apprentice ; and the impatience of 
Benjamin, under what he deemed the injurious treat- 
ment of his brother, led him to assert his freedom, feel- 
ing sure that James would not venture to appeal open- 
ly, at law, or otherwise, to the secret indenture. In his 
own account of this affair, he makes the following frank 
and ingenuous statement : — 

" It was not fair in me to take this advantage, and this 
I therefore reckon one of the first errata of my life ; 
but the unfairness of it weighed little with me, when 
under the impressions of resentment for the blows his 
[James's] passion too often urged him to bestow upon 
me; though he was otherwise not an illnatured man; 
and perhaps I was too saucy and provoking." 

Benjamin, however, carried his resentment no further 
than simply to break off his apprenticeship ; for when 
his brother, on finding him determined to leave, went 
round and spoke to the other master-j^rinters in Boston, 
to prevent his procuring employment, instead of dis- 
closing the actual condition of the indentures, he kept 
the secret, and turned his thoughts elsewhere, and par- 
ticularly toward New York, as the nearest place in 
which he would be likely to obtain employment as a 
printer. Of his views and motives at this time, he has 
himself given the following account : — 

" I was rather inclined," says he, " to leave Boston, 
when I reflected that I had already made myself a little 
obnoxious to the governing party, and, from the arbitrary 
proceedings of the assembly in my brother's case, it 
was likely I might, if I stayed, soon bring myself into 
scrapes ; and further, that my indiscreet disputations 
about religion, began to make me pointed at with hor- 
ror by good people, as an infidel and atheist. I con- 
cluded, therefore, to remove to New York ; but my 



d6 LIFE OF D^fjAiMIN FRANKLIN. 

father now siding with my brother, I was sensible that 
if I attempted to go openly, means would be used to 
prevent me." 

In this emergency he resorted to his friend Collins, 
who, at Benjamin's request, engaged a passage for him 
in a New York sloop then just about to sail ; alleging 
to the captain, .as the reason for his leaving Boston clan- 
destinely, that he had an intrigue with a girl of bad 
character, whose parents would compel him to marry 
her, unless he could make his escape in this manner. 
*' I sold my books," says he, " to raise a little money, 
was taken on board the sloop privately, had a fair wind, 
and in three days found myself at New York, near 300 
miles from my home, at the age of seventeen (October, 
1723), without the least recommendation, or knowledge 
of any person in the place, and very little money in my 
pocket." 



JOURNEY TO PHILADELPHIA. 37 



CHAPTER IV. 

INCIDENTS ON HIS JOURNEY TO PHILADELPHIA. 

At Ne^v York Benjamin's early " hankering for the 
sea," if he had still cherished it, might have been easily 
gratified. Fortunately for him, however, if we may 
judge from actual consequences, that desire had left 
him ; and having now a good trade, one for which he 
had acquired a liking, and in which he had become an 
expert workman, he lost no time in seeking for employ- 
ment as a journeyman-printer. With this view he went 
at once*to Mr. William Bradford, as the most promment 
master-printer at that time in the city. This person had 
originally been established in Philadelphia, and was the 
earliest printer in Pennsylvania; but having got into a 
contest with Keith, then governor of that province, he 
had transfeiTed himself to New York. Mr. Bradford 
had no occasion to hire an additional hand, but he told 
Benjamin that his son, Andrew Bradford, who was en- 
gaged in the printing business, in Philadelphia, had 
been recently deprived, by death, of his principal work- 
man, and would, as he confidently believed, be likely 

to employ him. 

For Philadelphia, then, though a hundred miles fur- 
ther, a distance by no means inconsiderable in those 
days', he manfully set forth ; taking himself a sail-boat 
for Amboy, but leaving his chest, containing most (3f his 



98 LIFE OF B#IJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

clothes, to be sent round by sea. While crossing New 
York bay, on the course for the Kills which separate 
Staten island from the main shore of Jersey, a violent 
squall split the sails of the boat, and drove it toward 
Long island. While thus driving, an amusing incident 
occurred, of which Franklin gives the following spright- 
ly account : — 

** In our way, a drunken Dutchman, who was a pas- 
senger too, fell overboard. When he was sinking, I 
reached through the water to his shock-pate and drew 
him up, so that we got him in again. His ducking so- 
bered him a little, and he went to sleep, taking first out 
of his pocket a book, which he desired I would dry for 
him. It proved to be my old favorite author, Bunyan's 
PilgriTJi's Progress, in Dutch, finely printed on good 
paper, with copper cuts ; a better dress than I had ever 
seen it wear in its own language. I have since found 
that it has been translated into most of the languages of 
Europe ; and I suppose it has been more generally read 
than any book, except perhaps the Bible. Honest John 
was the first that I know of, who mixed narrative with 
dialogue ; a method of writing very engaging to the 
reader, who, in the most interesting parts, finds himself, 
as it were, admitted into the company and present at 
the conversation." 

But, to return to the condition of the voyagers, which 
was by no means free from peril — the surf ran so high 
on the Long island beach, and the tempest was so violent, 
that the boat's company could neither land themselves, 
nor receive assistance from the shore; so, dropping an- 
chor, they rode out the gale as well as they could ; and 
when night came down upon them, they had no resource 
but to wait patiently for the lulling of the storm. Thus 
situated, Benjamin and the boat-master, determining to 
get, if possible, a little sleep, bestowed themselves as 



STORM IN NEW YORK BAY. 39 

snugly as circumstances permitted, under the hatches 
alongside of the still wet Dutchman, But the spray 
making a continual breach over the little vessel and 
dripping down upon them, they were soon as thoroughly 
soaked as their unlucky bed-fellow who had previously 
turned in ; and in this comfortless condition they passed 
the night. In the morning, however, the wind went 
down, and they ''made shift to reach Amboy before 
night, after having been thirty hours on the water, with- 
out victuals, and no drink but a little filthy rum, the 
water sailed on being salt." 

After such an exposure it is not surprising that Ben- 
jamin found himself feverish in the evening. Recol- 
lecting, however, that he had somewhere seen it stated 
that copious draughts of cold water were very useful, 
on such occasions, he had the good sense to give the 
remedy a fair trial. This gave him, in the course of the 
night, so effectual a sweating, that, when the morning 
came, his fever was gone, and he set forth on foot for 
Burlington, fifty miles distant, on the Delaware river, 
where he expected to be able readily to obtain passage 
in a boat to Philadelphia. 

A heavy rain fell, all that day, and when noon came 
he stopped at a small tavern, where he determined to 
rest till the next morning. On reaching this place, wet, 
weary, and alone, he experienced such a depression of 
spirits that he began to wish, as he relates, that he had 
never left home. His age and appearance,; with the 
other attendino: circumstances, were such that he soon 
perceived, by the manner in which he was interrogated, 
that he was suspeeted to be a " runaway indentured 
servant;" and his trouble was increased by the fear of 
being taken into custody. He was not molested, how- 
ever, and the next day, pushing stoutly forward, he reach- 
ed a tavern about ten miles from Burlington, "kept- by 



40 LIFE OF BiffjAMIN FRANKLIN. 

one Dr. Brown." While taking some refreshment, 
Brown, says Franklin, " entered into conversation, with 
me, and finding I had read a little, became very obli- 
ging and friendly ; and our acquaintance continued all 
the rest of his life." 

Franklin conjectured that this Mr. Brown had been 
an itinerant quack doctor ; ** for there was no town in 
England, nor any country of Europe, of which he could 
not give a very particular account." He speaks of him 
as an ingenious man, of some attainments in literature ; 
but adds, " he was an infidel, and wickedly undertook, 
some years after, to turn the Bible into doggrel verse, 
as Cotton had formerly done with Virgil. By this 
means he set many facts in a ridiculous light, and might 
have done mischief with weak minds, if his work had 
been published; but it never was." 

Benjamin stayed that night at Brown's, and the next 
morning, which was Saturday, proceeded to Burlington, 
which, however, he did not reach, till a little after the 
regular boats for Philadelphia had gone. While pas- 
sing through the town, he had stopped a moment at the 
door of an elderly woman, who sold gingerbread, of 
which he had purchased a little to comfort him on his 
expected passage to Philadelphia ; and now, upon learn- 
ing that no boat was likely to leave Burlington for that 
city, sooner than the next Tuesday, he turned back from 
the river-side to the house of the gingerbread woman, 
whose look he thought had been kindly, to acquaint her 
with his disappointment, and ask her advice. On hear- 
ing his statement, she very hospitably offered to lodge 
him, till he could find a passage. To this, leg-weary as 
he was, he gladly assented ; and as they talked together, 
the good woman, learning that he was a printer, pro- 
posed, in her ignorance of what would be needed for 
the purpose, that he should set up his business in Bur- 



THE GINGERBREAD WOMAN. 41 

lington. She further manifested her kindness by giving 
him a nice dinner of ox-cheek, " accepting only a pot of 
ale in return." 

To the youth of seventeen, weary, lonely, far from 
home for the first time in his life, w^ith a dim and un- 
certain prospect before him, the kindness of that- poor 
woman must have given unwonted efficacy to the re- 
freshing virtues of the ox-cheek and the ale ; for " bet- 
ter is a dinner of herbs, where love is, than a stalled 
ox, and hatred therewith." It was a pleasant stage in 
his wet and dreary journey ; and he was expecting, not 
discontentedly, to remain with the hospitable ginger- 
bread-woman till Tuesday, when, as the day was clo- 
sing and he was walking by the side of the river, he saw 
a boat coming down on its way to Philadelphia, with 
several persons on board, and with them he obtained a 
passage. 

There was no wind, and it was necessary to row. 
About midnight, having seen nothing ahead betokening 
their approach to the city, some of the company, fear- 
ing they had passed it in the dark, would row no fur- 
ther; and as none of them knew precisely where they 
were, they turned into a creek, landed near an old fence, 
of the rails of which they made a fire that chill October 
night, and like Paul and his companions at Melita, they 
" wished for day." When the day came, one of the 
company recognised the place as Cooper's creek, a 
short distance above Philadelphia ; whereupon, embark- 
ing and pulling out a little from the cover of the high 
banks of the creek, the city became visible, and they 
reached it about 9 o'clock, landing at the Market street 
wharf. 

4* 



42 LIFE OF Yi^Kl 



AMIN FRANKLIN. 



CHAPTER V. 

PROCURES EMPLOYMENT IN PHILADELPHIA. 

The personal condition of our hero, on his arrival at 
Philadelphia, and the appearance he made as he took 
his first walk in the streets of that city, derive so much 
interest from the lustre of his subsequent position in 
that community, and present so strong a contrast there- 
with, that his own description of himself, at that time, 
is here copied; and a vivid and graphic one it is : — 

'* I was," says he, *' in my working-dress, my best 
clothes coming round by sea. I was dirty from ray be- 
ing so long in the boat. My pockets were stuffed out 
with shirts and stockings, and I knew no one, nor where 
to look for lodging. Fatigued with walking, rowing, 
and the want of sleep, I was very hungry; and my 
whole stock of cash consisted of a single dollar, and 
about a shilling in copper coin, which I gave to the 
boatmen for my passage. At first they refused it, on 
account of my having rowed ; but I insisted on their 
taking it. Man is sometimes more generous when he 
has little money, than when he has plenty ; perhaps to 
prevent his being thought to have but little." 

Having thus satisfied his self-esteem by paying for 
his passage, he walked into the city. Near Market 
street he met a boy with bread, and learning from him 



ROLLS OF BREAD QUAKER MEETING. 43 

where he obtained it, he went directly to the baker's, to 
satisfy his hunger, as he had often done before, with a 
meal of dry bread. He first inquired for biscuits, ex- 
pecting to find such as he had been accustomed to eat 
in Boston ; but as the Philadelphia bakers did not make 
them, he asked the baker for three-pence worth of bread 
in any form. 

"He accordingly gave me," says Franklin, "three 
great puffy rolls. I was surprised at the quantity, but 
took it, and, having no room in my pockets, walked off 
with a roll under each arm, and eating the other. Thus 
I went up Market street as far as Fourth street, pas- 
sing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father ; 
when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I 
made, as I certainly did, a most awkward and ridicu- 
lous appearance. Then I turned and went down Chest- 
nut street and part of Walnut street, eating my roll all 
the way and coming round, found myself again at 
Market street wharf, near the boat I came in, to which 
■I went for a draught of the river water; and beino- 
filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a wo- 
man and her child that came down the river in the boat 
with us, and were waiting to go further." 

Having done this act of kindness — an act, which, if 
measured, as it ought to be, by his own personal circum- 
stances at the time, should not be regarded merely as 
testimony of the unreflecting sympathy of youth, but as 
an earnest of that deliberate bounty of disposition, which 
distinguished him through life — and having been him- 
self refreshed by his bread and water, he set forth again, 
and walking up the same street, he now found it throng- 
ed with neat well-dressed people, all going one way. 
" I joined them," says he, " and thereby was led into 
the great Meeting-House of the Quakers, near the mar- 
ket. I sat down among them, and, after looking round 



44 LIFE OP B^JAMIN FRANKLIN. 

awhile and bearing nothing said, being very drowsy 
through labor and the want of rest the preceding night, 
I fell fast asleep, and continued so till the meeting broke 
up, when some one was kind enough to rouse me. This, 
therefore, was the first house I was in, or slept in, in 
Philadelphia." 

Leaving the Meeting-House, he bent his steps toward 
the river again, reading faces as he went (not from im- 
pertinence, as will be seen), till he met a young man, a 
Quaker, whose countenance was so pleasing that he ac- 
costed him, requesting, as a stranger, to be informed 
where he could find lodging. The reply of the young man 
justified the favorable impression made by his counte- 
nance ; for it manifested that considerate and honest re- 
gard for the welfare of the youthful stranger, which, 
though really a duty, is of a class not often performed, 
nor even remembered ; but which showed that this young 
Quaker comprehended and recognised, on this occasion 
at least, his obligation as a neighbor, in that wide and 
generous sense, in which it is inculcated in the beautiful 
parable of The Good Samaritcm. They were near a 
tavern with the sign of The Three Mariners, to which 
the young man pointed, saying, in answer to the inquiry, 
— " Here is a house where they receive strangers, but 
it is not a reputable one ; if thou wilt walk with me, I 
will show thee a better one" — and then conducted him 
to The Crooked Billet. There Benjamin took dinner, 
and while thus engaged he there again perceived, from 
the manner in which he was questioned, that he was 
*' suspected of being a runaway." When he had fin- 
ished his meal he asked for a bed, and being taken to 
one, he threw himself upon it, without waiting to un- 
dress, and slept till called to supper ; after which, he 
** went to bed again very early, and slept very soundly 
till next morning." 



PHILADELPHIA PRINTERS. 45 

Having now, by abundant rest and food, recovered 
from the fatigue of his toilsome journey from New- 
York, though his chest containing his better clothes had 
not yet arrived, he dressed himself as neatly as circum- 
stances would permit, and went forth to call upon An- 
drew Bradford, the ]Di'inter. 

Mr. Bradford was in his printing-office, where Benja- 
min, to his surprise, also found with him his father, Mr. 
William Bradford, who, coming from New York on 
horseback, had reached Philadelphia before him. The 
old gentleman instantly recognised Benjamin and intro- 
duced him to his son, who received him very civilly, 
and gave him a breakfast, but did not then need another 
journeyman, having recently hired one. He informed 
him, however, that there was another printer in the 
place, by the name of Keimer, who had lately opened a 
printing-office, and who might perhaps employ him ; but 
kindly added that if he should not be wanted there, he 
was welcome to lodge at his own house, and he would 
give him something to do, from time to time, till he 
could procure fuller employment. 

The elder Bradford obligingly went to Keimer's with 
Benjamin, and on finding him in his shop, said — 
" Neighbor, I have brought to see you a young man of 
your business ; perhaps you may want such a one." 
Upon this, Keimer, after asking a few questions and 
putting into his hand a composing-stick, to see how he 
worked, told him that just then he had nothing for him 
to do, but would employ him soon. Keimer had never 
seen the elder Bradford before, and supposing him to 
be a resident of the town favorably disposed toward 
him, conversed freely with him about his own affairs ; 
and having, unguardedly, dropped a hint that he ex- 
pected, shortly, to be enabled to secure to himself most 
of the printing business of the place, the crafty father, 



<16 LIFE OF ^^JJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

warily avoiding any disclosure of his relationship to 
Andrew Bradford, gradually pumped from the commu- 
nicative Keimer, a full account of his plans and pros- 
pects, as well as the personal influences and other means, 
on which he relied for the attainment of his objects; 
and having thus got all he wanted, the cunning old man 
went away, leaving Benjamin and Keimer together. The 
latter, on being informed by his new acquaintance who 
the old man was, experienced no little surprise and 
chagrin. 

The whole interview, in the deceitful and dishonest 
craftiness practised by one of the parties, and in the 
weak and leaky folly with which the other betrayed his 
most important secrets, to a person whom he did not 
know, furnished to Benjamin an impressive lesson of 
the value of circumspection and a discreet reserve, as 
being only the dictate of ordinary prudence, in all in- 
tercourse with strangers upon matters of business, and 
as generally indispensable to the successful management 
of private affairs, amid the keen competitions of life. 

Upon inspecting the condition of Keimer's printing- 
office, Benjamin found it to be very much as might have 
been expected, from such a lax and careless character, as 
the one just now disclosed, and serving to betoken it 
still more fully. The whole equipment appears to have 
consisted of " an old damaged press and a small worn- 
out font of English types," which Keimer himself was 
using in setting up an Elegy to the memory of Aquila 
Rose, the lately deceased foreman of Andrew Brad- 
ford's office; "an ingenuous young man," says Frank- 
lin, " of excellent character, much respected in the 
town, secretary of the assembly, and a pretty poet." 

In recounting these incidents Franklin adds, that 
" Keimer made verses too, but very indifferently. He 
could not be said to write them ; for his method was to 



KEIMER HIS CHARACTER. 47 

compose them in the types, directly out of'his head." 
As there was no written copy, only one pair of cases, 
and little if any more letter than the Elegy alone would 
require, the compositor -poet could receive no aid, unless 
from his muse, in committing his verses to type. Ben- 
jamin, however, made himself useful by overhauling the 
old press, which Keimer had neither used, nor knew 
how to use ; and when he had put it in working order, 
and had promised to come and loorh off the Elegy as 
soon as it was ready, he returned to Bradford, who set 
him upon a small job, and with whom, for the time be- 
ing, he quartered. In the course of a few days, it be- 
ing announced to Benjamin that the Elegy was ready, 
he went and put it through the press, as he had prom- 
ised ; and Keimer having now procured another pair of 
cases, set him at work upon a pamphlet, which had just 
been sent in to be reprinted. 

Neither of these men, however, as Franklin found, 
had more than a very scanty knowledge of the trade 
they had undertaken. Bradford, it appears, had not 
only never been bred a printer, but was very illiterate ; 
while Keimer, though he had received more general in- 
struction and was more acquainted with books, knew 
little or nothing of any part of his business, except mere- 
ly the setting of types. And though the former was 
doubtless the superior in point of plain sense and gen- 
eral repute as a citizen, yet the latter, from his pecu- 
liarities of temper and habits of thinking, was clearly 
the more amusing of the two, as an individual man. He 
was, indeed, an oddity, and his character presented not 
a little of the grotesque. 

He had, at an earlier period, belonged to one of the 
strange sects of those days, called the French prophets, 
and he could perform their enthusiastic exercises. " At 
this time," however, says Franklin, " he did not profess 



48 LIFE OF l^JAMIN FRANKLIN. 

any 'particular religion, but something of all^ upon oc- 
casion ; was very ignorant of the world, and had, as I 
afterward found, a good deal of the knave in his com- 
position." 

As a further specimen of him it may be mentioned 
that Keimer had a house, but no furniture ; so that he 
could not lodge his new journeyman, whose boarding at 
Bradford's, nevertheless, while working for himself, he 
disliked. He therefore procured quarters for Benjamin 
at the house of his future father-in-law, Mr. Read, where, 
as he says of himself long after, *' my chest of clothes 
being come, I made a rather more respectable appear- 
ance in the eyes of Miss Read, than I had done, when 
she first happened to see me eating my roll in the 
street." 

Being now agreeably settled, with sufficient employ- 
ment to enable him, by his own industry and frugality, 
to provide for himself, he began to make acquaintances 
" among the young people of the town," particularly 
such as were "lovers of reading, with whom he spent 
his evenings very pleasantly," and endeavored to wean 
his thoughts from Boston as much as possible. 

While thus comfortably situated, working cheerfully 
at his trade and contented with his prospects, some 
events occurred, in the course of a few months, which 
not only led him to revisit his native place much sooner 
than he had anticipated, but interrupted his present con- 
nexions, and gave a new face and direction to his affairs. 

One of his sisters had married Robert Holmes, who 
was master of a sloop engaged in the coasting-trade be- 
tween Boston and the towns on the Delaware bay and 
river. In the course of the winter immediately suc- 
ceeding Benjamin's fixing himself in Philadelphia, the 
winter of 1723-'4, Holmes arrived with his sloop at 
Newcastle, about forty miles below Philadelphia, and 



SIR WILLIAM KEITH. 49 

while there, hearing of his young brother-in-law, he 
wrote him a letter, telling him of the sorrow of his pa- 
rents and other relatives, at his having absconded they 
knew not whither, assuring him that their affection for 
him was undiminished, and that everything would be 
arranged to his satisfaction, if he would go back to 
them, which Holmes earnestly besought him to do. 

To this letter Benjamin wrote a full and kind reply, 
expressing his thanks to his brother-in-law for the af- 
fectionate regard which had prompted his letter, and 
placing his own reasons for leaving Boston, in such a 
point of view and with so much clearness and force, 
that Holmes became convinced, as he subsequently ad- 
mitted, that Benjamin had " not been so much in the 
wrong as he had ajDpr eh ended." 

Sir William Keith, at that period governor of Penn- 
sylvania, happened to be at Newcastle and in company 
with Captain Holmes, when Benjamin's letter was de- 
livered to his brother-in-law, who, after perusing it him- 
self, handed it to the governor and gave him some ac- 
count of the writer. The governor, having read the 
letter, made further inquiries respecting Benjamin ; and, 
on learning his age, manifested much surprise at finding 
him so young, and not a little admiration at the uncom- 
mon talents and force of character developed so early 
in life. He went on to say that such a youth should be 
countenanced and encouraged ; he spoke contemptuous- 
ly of the printers then in Philadelphia, and of the way 
in which they conducted their business ; expressed his 
entire conviction that, if Benjamin would open a print- 
ing-office on his own account, he would unquestionably 
be successful ; and declared that, for his own part, he 
would procure for him the public printing, and would 
render jiim every kind of assistance and patronage in 
his power. 

5 



50 LIFE OF ^MJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Such, as Captain Holmes informed Benjamin when 
they subsequently met in Boston, was the warm and en- 
couraging language held by the governor, on the occa- 
sion mentioned. At the time, however, nothing of all 
this had been made known to Benjamin, when, as he and 
Keimer were one day at work in their printing-office, 
on looking through a window near them, they saw two 
well-dressed gentlemen coming across the street direct- 
ly toward the office, and immediately after heard them 
at the door below. These gentlemen were Governor 
Keith and a Colonel French, of Newcastle. 

Keimer, very naturally taking it for granted that their 
visit was intended for him, and that new custom was at 
hand, hastened down to admit them. The governor, 
however, inquired only for Benjamin ; and making his 
way up-stairs into the office, accosted the young printer 
with great courtesy, expressed his earnest desire to be- 
come acquainted with him, blamed him, with gracious 
condescension, for not having made himself known to 
him on his first arrival at Philadelphia, and insisted on 
his instantly accompanying himself and his friend Col- 
onel French, to the tavern to which they were going, 
**to taste some excellent Madeira." 

At all this, Benjamin was himself "not a little sur- 
prised," while Keimer " stared with astonishment." Af- 
ter reaching the tavern, and as they were sitting over the 
wine, Governor Keith announced his proposal that Ben- 
jamin should open a printing-office and go into business 
as a printer, on his own account. He urged, with much 
zeal and plausibility, the reasons for calculating on suc- 
cess ; and both Sir William and Colonel French pledged 
to him their whole interest and influence, to procure for 
him the public printing of the two governments of 
Pennsylvania and Delaware. 

To carry such a plan into effect, however, Benjamin 



A NEW PROJECT. 51 

had no means of his own, and he frankly stated that he 
could not count at all upon being able to obtain such 
means from his father. The governor met this objec- 
tion by promising to write to Josiah Franklin, very 
fully, and to set forth the advantages of the plan, as well 
as the reasons why it must succeed, in such a light as 
would, he was confident, procure his approval and as- 
sistance ; and before the interview ended, it was con- 
cluded that Benjamin should avail himself of the first 
vessel bound for Boston, to go with Governor Keith's 
promised letter to his father. Meanwhile the whole 
scheme was to be kept strictly secret. 

This affair having been thus arranged, Benjamin con- 
tinued to work for Keimer as usual ; his social inter- 
course being varied, and his hopes cheered, by accept- 
ing, from time to time, the invitations of Sir William 
Keith to dine with him at his own house, on which oc- 
casions Sir William conversed with him in " the most 
affable, familiar, and friendly manner." 

At length, near the end of April, 1724, a vessel was 
advertised for Boston. Governor Keith prepared a 
long and elaborate letter to Benjamin's father, in which 
he spoke of his son in the strongest terms of commen- 
dation, and urged the proposed plan, with great earnest- 
ness, as being not only every way eligible for the young 
printer, but as most likely to lay the foundation for his 
permanent prosperity; and Benjamin, assigning to 
Keimer, as the reason of his going, a strong desire to 
visit his relations, took his leave, and embarked for his 
native towTi, having completed the eighteenth year of 
his age, in the preceding January. In Delaware bay 
they struck a shoal and started a leak. This and rough 
weather at sea kept the pumps going, Benjamin taking 
his turn ; but in two weeks they reached Boston in 
safety. 



52 LIFE OF B^frAMIN FRANKLIN. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HIS VISIT TO BOSTON AND RETURN TO PHILADELPHIA. 

It was now seven months since Benjamin had left 
home without the knowledge of any of his relatives, and 
during all that time they had received no tidings of him; 
for his brother-in-law, Captain Holmes, had not yet re- 
turned to Boston, since his correspondence with Benja- 
min, while at Newcastle, nor had he said anything con- 
cerning him, in his letters. His appearance, therefore, 
took his parents and other friends by surprise. They 
were, nevertheless, glad to see him again, and they all 
gave hira a cordial welcome home, except only his 
brother James, the printer. In 'his own naiTative, 
Franklin says : "I went to see him at his printing- 
house. I was better dressed than ever while in his ser- 
vice, having a genteel new suit from head to foot, a 
watch, and my pockets lined with near five pounds ster- 
ling, in silver. He received me not very frankly, looked 
me all over, and turned to his work again." 

This sullen coldness of James, however, did not chill 
the hands in the office, who received their former work- 
fellow and companion, now returned from his travels, 
in a very different spirit. They gave him a hearty 
greeting, and crowded round him eager to learn where he 
had been, what he had seen, what he had been doing, and 
especially howhe liked the place where he had been work- 
ing at his ti'ade, and what encouragements it offered in 



DECISION AGAINST THE NEW PROJECT. 53 

that line. Benjamin cheerfully answered their inquiries, 
spoke warmly in praise of Philadelphia and of the hap- 
py life he led there, and in strong terms declared his 
intention to return thither. On being asked by one of 
the hands, what sort of money was commonly in use 
there, he replied by spreading a handful of silver coin 
before them, which, as he remarks, was " a kind of 
raree-show they had not been used to," the currency in 
Boston, at that period, consisting almost exclusively of 
paper-money. He then showed them his watch ; and 
finally, observing the sullen demeanor of his brother, he 
gave them a dollar to regale themselves with, and took 
his leave. 

These things, as it afterward appeared, offended his 
brother deeply ; for when their excellent mother sub- 
sequently took an opportunity to speak to him of recon- 
ciliation, expressing her earnest desire to see them liv- 
ing together in mutual kindness, as brothers should, 
James replied to her, says Benjamin, "that I had in- 
sulted him in such a manner, before his people, that he 
could never forget or forgive it." It is gratifying to re- 
cord, however, that in the last particular James was mis- 
taken, and that the two brothers became ultimately rec- 
onciled. 

Josiah Franklin, the father, read Governor Keith's 
letter, as might well be supposed, with no little surprise. 
Being a circumspect and prudent man, however, he de- 
ferred saying much about it to Benjamin, until he could 
see his son-in-law. Captain Holmes, to whom^ when he 
got back to Boston, he immediately showed the letter, 
and made very particular inquiries of him as to Keith's 
character; expressing much doubt of his discretion, 
from his having proposed to place so young a person as 
Benjamin, in so responsible a situation; and entering 
fully into the consideration of the whole matter. 

5* 



54 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Holmes, who felt a warm regard for his young brother- 
in-law and had formed a high estimate of his abilities, 
presented, in favor of the project, such reasons as his 
knowledge of Philadelphia and of the prospects of 
business in that quarter, as well as the capacity of Ben- 
jamin and the esteem in which he was held, could sup- 
ply. But the clear understanding and solid judgment 
of the father not being convinced, he at length, after 
due deliberation, gave an unqualified decision against 
the proposed scheme, and wholly refused to render his 
assistance to carry it into effect. He stated this deter- 
mination, in very civil language, in a letter to Governor 
Keith, in which he thanked him for the countenance he 
had given his son, and for the patronage he had so 
kindly promised him ; placing his own decision in the 
case, on the ground that his son was too young and in- 
experienced safely to encounter the responsibilities of a 
business, which required such considerable means to es- 
tablish it, and so much care, discretion, and steadiness, 
to manage it successfully. 

But, though such was the decision concerning the pro- 
posed plan, yet Benjamin was largely compensated, for 
the disappointment of any hopes he might have indulged, 
in that respect, by the deep gratification his father plain- 
ly manifested, at finding that his son had not only been 
able to win the notice and esteem of a person of such 
distinction as Sir William Keith, but that he had also 
been able, by his industry and frugality, to provide for 
himself so well, in so short a time. These circum- 
stances, together with the embittered state of feeling 
on the part of James, which rendered any harmonious 
co-operation between the two brothers hopeless, at least 
for the present, induced the father to give his ready 
consent to Benjamin's return to Philadelphia; accom- 
panying that consent with his advice to the young man 



PARENTAL LOVE AND COUNSEL. 55 

to check his propensity to satire ; to seek the esteem 
and goodwill of the community by a respectful and con- 
ciliatory deportment; and to treat all subjects of grave 
import, v^^ith the considerate sobriety due to them, and 
vv^ith that deference to the feelings as well as the opin- 
ions of others, which is, in truth, the duty of all, but 
is peculiarly becoming in the young. 

To this sound and apposite counsel, the father, as 
mindful of his love as of his duty, added the encour- 
aging suggestion, that his son, " by steady industry and 
prudent parsimony," might, by the time he would be 
twenty-one, save from his earnings nearly or quite 
enough to set himself up in business, with his own in- 
dependent means ; but that if, in faithfully pursuing 
such a course, he should fall somewhat short of the sum 
requisite for so important a purpose, he would himself, 
in that case, supply the deficiency. 

" This was all I could obtain," says Franklin, *' except 
some small gifts, as tokens of his and my mother's love, 
when I embarked again for New York — noiv with their 
approbation and blessing." And better to the youth 
were those tokens of parental love, and that parental 
blessing, than could have been, at that period of his 
life, the readiest consent to the proposed undertaking, 
with the most ample supply of money only, to carry it 
forward. 

The observant and sagacious father, who had long 
been watching the growth of his son's character, and 
the form it was receiving from its predominant elements 
as they unfolded, though he looked on with a cheering 
hope, yet clearly saw that the gifted youth intrusted to 
his care, needed a fuller experience of himself, not less 
than of others, and a judgment more exercised in the 
actual concerns of life, as well as more settled princi- 
ples and habits of action, before he could safely en conn- 



56 



LIFE OF B^JAMIN F.RANKLIN. 



ter the responsibilities of business, or even secure that 
confidence, on the part of the community, which is as 
necessary as money, to permanent success in the man- 
agement of private affairs. The events of only a few 
quick foil owning years, showed Benjamin, very plainly, 
that his father had, on this occasion, decided wisely ; 
and the union of considerate kindness, prudence, and 
firmness, so happily blended in the conduct of his father, 
throughout this whole affair, presents a beautiful exam- 
ple of the true paternal character. . 

While waiting in Boston for his father's decision, as 
related, Benjamin renewed his intercourse with his for- 
mer companion, Collins, who was now employed as a 
clerk in the postoffice in that town; and who became so 
much smitten with Benjamin's description of Philadel- 
phia, of his associates, and his way of life there, that he 
resolved to transfer himself to the same place. 

Collins had accumulated what, for a youth in his cir- 
cumstances was a considerable and valuable collection of 
books, chiefly on mathematics and natural philosophy. 
Leaving these to go on, by water, with Benjamin's books 
and under his charge, and wishing to visit some friends in 
Rhode Island, Collins quitted Boston first, intending to 
go by land to New York, where the two friends were 
again to meet and proceed to Philadelphia together. 

It has already been related that, while Benjamin was 
still employed as a boy in his father's shop, his brother 
John had married and gone to settle himself in busi- 
ness, in Rhode Island. As the sloop, in which Benja- 
min now took passage for New York, touched at New- 
port, it gave him the very gratifying opportunity of 
again seeing John, who " received him very affection- 
ately, for he had always loved him." 

While at Newport, a friend of his brother, by the name 
of Vernon, who had a debt of about thirty-five pounds 



QUAKER matron's WARNING. 57^ 

due to him in Pennsylvania, gave Benjamin an order to 
collect and retain it, until he should receive directions 
from Vernon how to dispose of the money. This agen- 
cy, before it vv^as over, occasioned him a great deal of 
uneasiness ; and it will be again mentioned, for the sake 
of the practical lesson — more valuable than the money 
in question — which the circumstances connected with it 
will furnish. 

The service, which, on the day of his first arrival in 
Philadelphia, Benjamin received from a worthy young 
Quaker, in the well-principled kindness with which the 
latter showed him to a respectable tavern, is doubtless 
remembered by the reader. He is now about to receive 
another and somewhat similar, but more important fa- 
vor, from another conscientious and benevolent individ- 
ual of the same exemplary class of people. The cir- 
cumstances alluded to, are related by Franklin in the 
following passage : — 

** At Newport we took in a number of passengers, 
among whom were two young women, travelling togeth- 
er, and a sensible matron-like Quaker-lady, with her ser- 
vants. I had shown an obliging disposition to render 
her some little services, which probably impressed her 
with sentiments of goodwill toward me; for when she 
witnessed the daily-growing familiarity between the 
young women and myself, which they appeared to en- 
courage, she took me aside and said : * Young man, I 
am concerned for thee, as thou hast no friend with thee, 
and seemest not to know much of the world, or of the 
snares youth is exposed to. Depend upon it these are very 
bad women. I can see it by all their actions ; and if thou 
art not upon thy guard, they will draw thee into some 
danger. They are strangers to thee ; and I advise thee, 
in a friendly concern for thy welfare, to have no ac- 
quaintance with them.' As I seemed at first not to 



S& LIFE OF B^^AMIN FRANKLIN. 

tliink so ill of them as she did, she mentioned some 
things she had observed and heard, that had escaped 
my notice, but now convinced me she was right. I 
thanked her for her kind advice, and promised to follow 
it. When we arrived at New York they told me where 
they lived, and invited me to come and see them. But 
I avoided it, and it was well I did ; for the next day the 
captain missed a silver-spoon and some other things, 
that had been taken out of his cabin ; and knowing that 
these were a couple of strumpets, he got a warrant to 
search their lodgings, found the stolen goods, and had 
the thieves punished. So, though we had escaped a 
sunken rock, which we scraped upon, in the passage, I 
thought t/iis escape of rather more importance to me." 

At New York Benjamin again met his friend Collins, 
according to arrangement. Upon being now thrown, 
by the circumstances of the case, into a much closer 
and more constant companionship with him, than could 
well take place during his recent stay in Boston, he 
found that his friend's habits and character had under- 
gone a most unhappy change. Through all the intimacy 
of their boyhood and early youth, Collins had been es- 
teemed for his industry and sobriety, his amiable man- 
ners and love of mental improvement. He had, indeed, 
disclosed an uncommon genius for mathematics and 
the physical sciences ; and having more leisure than 
Benjamin, for such studies, he had not only made greatei' 
proficiency in them, but had, by his attainments therein, 
attracted the regard of several men distinguished for 
their learning, and had given the most hopeful indica- 
tions of future eminence. 

After Benjamin's elopement from Boston, however, 
the misguided Collins fell into the practice of drinking 
brandy, which soon ripening into habitual intemperance, 
led, as usual, to other vices; and his friend on rejoining 



VISIT TO GOVERNOR BURNET. 59 

him in New York, was not less grieved, than sui-prised, 
to discover that Collins had not only been drunk every 
day, since his aiTival in that city, but had lost all his 
money, in gaming ; so that Benjamin had to pay for the 
whole of his board and lodging while there, and his 
expenses to Philadelphia. This, however, he would 
scarcely have been able to do, had he not been fortu- 
nate enough to collect the money due on Vernon's or- 
der; so heavy a drain had Collins made on the purse of 
his liberal friend. 

While in New York, an incident occurred, which 
made some compensation to Benjamin for the cost and 
annoyance occasioned by the misconduct of Collins ; 
and served to deepen, at least in his own mind, if not 
in that of his companion, the sense of injury and degra- 
dation, which inevitably result from the habit of intem- 
perate drinking. The incident was long afterward re- 
lated by Benjamin as follows : — 

" The then governor of New York, Burnet (son of 
Bishop Burnet), hearing from the captain that one of 
his passengers had a great many books on board, de- 
sired him to bring me to see him. I waited on him, and 
should have taken Colliiis with me, if he had been sober. 
The governor received me with great civility ; showed 
me his library, which was a considerable one ; and we 
had a good deal of conversation relative to books and 
authors. This was the second governor, who had done 
me the honor to take notice of me ; and for a poor boy, 
like me, it was very pleasing." 

Unhappy, besotted Collins ! He was as highly gifted 
as his friend ; he possessed at that period of their lives, 
more science, and a wider range of literary acquire- 
ments ; and had become not a little distinguished for the 
uncommon fluency, grace, eloquence, variety, and spirit 
of his conversation. And though he, too, was " a poor 



60 LIFE OF IIPHJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

boy," yet, if his habits and personal condition had not 
rendered him, with all his rare gifts and attainments, 
unfit for any personal intercourse with people of culti- 
vation and refinement, dignity of character and purity 
of manners, how still more remarkable would have been 
that interview, in the apartment of Governor Burnet's 
library, with two such representatives of the young gen- 
eration then verging to maturity, pressing forward to a 
fame destined to be won in upholding the public liber- 
ties, or in serving and adorning their country by their 
literary accomplishments and performances, or by ad- 
vancing the limits of human knowledge ! 



COLLINS BORROWS VERNON's MONEY. 61 



CHAPTER VII. 

VERNON's money COLLINS SIR WILLIAM KEITH MISS 

READ. 

On reaching Philadelphia, Collins endeavored to pro- 
cure a clerkship in some counting-house ; but his aspect, 
or manner, or dram-flavored breath, or all together, must 
have betrayed him ; for although he had brought recom- 
mendations, and though, but for his fatal habit, these 
recommendations would probably have been supei*fluous, 
yet his applications for a place were unsuccessful ; so 
that he continued living at the expense of his generous 
friend, and at the same house with him. 

It was still further unlucky for the latter, that Collins 
was aware of his having collected Vernon's debt ; inas- 
much as he managed to borrow, from time to time, in 
petty sums, to be returned ** as soon as he should be in 
business," so much of that fund as to occasion, before 
long, no little distress to Benjamin, especially when it 
occurred to him that he might be suddenly required to 
pay it over to the owner. 

His compliance, in this matter, with the importuni- 
ties of Collins, was the weakest act Benjamin had yet 
done. Although that compliance proceeded, doubtless, 
from a warm feeling of kindness for an old friend, 
wholly unmingled with any conscious intent to do an 
act morally wrong, and though the language of Vernon, 

6 



62 LIFE OF BJpTJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



when giving him authority to collect the debt, conveyed 
a plain implication that the money would not be wanted 
for a considerable time, yet the distress of mind, ari- 
sing from the inborn sense of right and wrong, which 
Benjamin shortly began to suffer, was the sure token, 
that, however amiable had been his impulse, and how- 
ever clear his motives from deliberate intent to injure, 
he had, nevertheless, weakly allowed himself to be led 
to do, what amounted, in point of fact, to a breach of 
trust. 

Such, in its naked truth, was the nature of the act in 
in question ; and it is only one of the many evidences, pre- 
sented in Franklin's life and writings, of that rigorous 
self-scrutiny and manly candor, which strongly marked 
his character, that he has, in his own account of his ca- 
reer, taken of this affair substantially, though briefly, the 
same view, which is here presented somewhat more 
at length and with more emphasis. And it is thus pre- 
sented here, for the urgent reason that, in the ordinary 
and daily transactions of life, there is, it is believed, no 
one form of error in conduct, so common as the very 
one here considered; not one, into which persons, in 
every class of society and every condition of fortune, 
are so frequently drawn by the specious impulses of 
amiable feeling, honest intention, and the various plau- 
sible fallacies of self-delusion ; not one, which has, first 
and last, made such havoc of personal honor and good- 
name, of private and public obligation, or of domestic 
peace and happiness, as this identical error — no, not one. 

For the sake of the warning, furnished by the char- 
acter and termination of the brief career of a youth of 
such brilliant early promise, as Collins, the remainder 
of all that is known of him, is here presented. 

In spite of remonstrance, enforced by pecuniary des- 
titution and dependence, Collins continued to indulge his 



BEHAVIOR AND FATE OF COLLINS. 63 

thirst for strong drink ; and being very irritable and inso- 
lent when tipsy, he sometimes wrangled even with the 
friend who had treated him so generously. An instance 
of this sort is related by that friend, to the following 
effect ; They were in a boat, on the Delaware, with 
several other young men, one afternoon, when Collins, 
under the influence of spirituous liquor just enough to 
carry his perverse wilfulness to its utmost point of un- 
reasonableness, refused to take his turn at the oar. " I 
will be rowed home," said he. " We will not row you," 
said Benjamin. " You must," replied Collins, " or stay 
all night on the water, just as you please." For the 
sake of quiet, the other young men said — ** Let us row ; 
what matters it"?" But Benjamin, justly indignant at 
such arrogance, persisted in his determination not to 
submit to it ; whereupon Collins swore he would make 
him row, or throw him overboard ; and forthwith stri- 
ding toward him on the benches of the boat, aimed at 
him a blow, which Benjamin avoided by suddenly bend- 
ing forward ; and at the same instant dexterously thrust- 
ing his head under Collins's thigh, pitched him into the 
river. Knowing him to be an excellent swimmer, Ben- 
jamin felt no concern about his drowning, and so kept 
the boat playing around him, but just out of his reach, 
with the design, and in the hope, of constraining him 
to promise that he would, if taken back into the boat, 
do his fair share of the rowing. But Collins, full of 
ire, though ready to choke with vexation and river- 
water, obstinately refused to make the required prom- 
ise ; till at last, when his strength was well nigh spent, 
and he began to be in some real danger, he was drawn 
into the boat, unsubdued, chilled, and sullen. 

This affair put an end to all free and cordial inter- 
course between the two, who had been so long held in 
bands of the most intimate companionship. 



64 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Not a very long time after, the master of a vessel 
trading to the West Indies, who had been commissioned 
to procure a tutor for the sons of an opulent planter of 
the island of Barbadoes, fell into company with Collins, 
and after a very short acquaintance engaged him for the 
situation mentioned. Before going, he promised to 
avail himself of the first money he should receive, to 
remit the amount of his debt to Benjamin. But this he 
never did ; and the friend, whose bounty he had so un- 
worthily enjoyed and abused, never heard of him more. 

It is saddening to think how so brilliant a light, just 
kindled and beginning to beam in beauty, was so pre- 
maturely quenched ; and the contrast presented by the 
history of these two youths, in its bearing on the mo- 
mentous duty of self-control, furnishes the young with 
a lesson, which combines the repellent force of the most 
solemn warning, with the healthful and cheering incite- 
ments of the most honorable and splendid success. 

But, to return from this digression, Benjamin, it may 
well be presumed, took the earliest opportunity, after 
coming back to Philadelphia, to wait on Governor Keith 
and deliver his father's letter. Sir William, when he 
had possessed himself of the views which the letter pre- 
sented, insisted that the writer was over-cautious, and 
did not give sufficient weight to the intrinsic differences 
in the personal characters of men ; that *' discretion did 
not always accompany years, nor was youth always 
without it;" but, said he to Benjamin, ** since your 
father will not set you up, I will do it myself. Grive me 
an inventory of the things necessary to be had from 
England, and I will send for them. You shall repay me 
when yo-u are able. I am resolved to have a good print- 
er here, and I am sure you must succeed." 

Sir William spoke, on this occasion, as he had spoken 
and acted from the beginning, with such cordial warmth 



CONDUCT OF SIR WILLIAM KEITH. 65 

and apparent sincerity, that Benjamin could not doubt 
that he was thoroughly in earaest. He therefore looked 
on Governor Keith as one of the best and most gener- 
ous of men ; and went with a cheerful spirit to prepare 
a list of such articles, and their quantities, as would be 
requisite to open a printing-office, on a moderate scale, 
but still sufficient for the business of the place, at the 
time ; and amounting, by his estimate, to about one hun- 
dred pounds sterling. 

The list being laid before Sir William, he expressed 
his approval of it ; but suggested that Benjamin had 
better go himself to London, for the materials wanted, 
inasmuch as, by being on the spot, he could not only 
suit himself exactly, both as to variety and quality, but 
he could form acquaintances, and make arrangements 
for correspondence in business, which would prove very 
advantageous to his permanent interests. 

As the correctness of such a view could not be gain- 
said, the governor concluded the interview, by tell- 
ing Benjamin to get himself ready to go out in the 
Annis, which was the regular packet between Philadel- 
phia and London, and, in those times, made a passage, 
each way, annually. 

As the Annis, however, was not to sail for several 
months, Benjamin, keeping his own counsel, continued 
working as usual for Keimer ; but chafing in spirit, 
with self-reproach, on account of the money he had per- 
mitted Collins to wheedle from him, and tormented with 
growing apprehension of a sudden draft upon him, from 
Vernon, for the whole sum. Fortunately, however, Ver- 
non did not make that draft till some years later. 

It will be recollected that Benjamin, while working, 
as an apprentice, for his brother James, adopted the 
practice of feeding exclusively on vegetable diet. He 
adhered faithfully to that practice, until, on his late voy- 

6* 



<^ LIFE OF B^^AMIN FRANKLIN. 

age from Philadelphia to Boston, circumstances occur- 
red which induced him to give it up. On that voyage, 
the vessel, when off Block island, was becalmed ; where- 
upon the sailors, getting out their fishing-tackle, went 
to catching cod, of which they took a great many. 

Though Benjamin had, for a considerable time, been 
holding the doctrine of his dietetical guide, Tryon, that 
it was wrong to make food of anything that once had 
lived, and though he had, therefore, regarded the taking 
of these cod, as an indefensible destruction of the great 
gift of life ; yet he had, also, at an earlier day and for a 
longer period, been exceedingly fond of fish ; and when 
the sailors, quitting catching for cooking, made a fry of 
some noble cod fresh from the deep cool waters, the 
warm steam from the pan greeted his smell with so 
rich a flavor, as mightily to shake his exclusive faith in 
vegetables. 

While he was still balancing, as he relates, between 
principle and inclination, he suddenly recollected that, 
when these cod were opened, he saw smaller fish taken 
from their stomachs. This flagrant fact determined him. 
If these fish feed upon each other, why might not he 
feed upon them; and so, satisfying his under standing 
with the law of retaliation, he straightway satisfied his 
appetite with a delicious meal of fried cod. 

From that time forward, he ceased to exclude fish, or 
flesh, from his customary food ; resorting to a merely 
vegetable diet, only when the state of his health seemed 
to ask for some temporary change of regimen. ** So 
convenient a thing it is," he pithily remarks, ** to be a 
reasonahle creature ; since it enables one to find, or to 
make, a reason for everything one has a mind to do^ 

During the months in which Benjamin was waiting, 
in hope, for the Annis to sail for England, his life passed 
on both pleasantly and usefully; and it will be alike en- 



KEIMER AND HIS NOTIONS. 67 

tertaining and proper to present an outline of some of 
its more salient features. 

He lived, in the main, on good terms with Keimer; 
for although that eccentric person had a whimsical mind, 
and a suspicious and irritable temper, yet, as he knew 
nothing at all of Benjamin's plans, seldom did anything 
interpose itself to disturb their harmony. The young 
journeyman, moreover, was a quick and shrewd discerner 
of character, and thoroughly understanding that of his 
employer, he had, in this respect, greatly the advantage ; 
so that, while dealing with him most uprightly in all 
matters of business, in which he was exceedingly useful 
to him, yet would his quick perception and good-natured 
enjoyment of the ludicrous, occasionally lead him, in 
various harmless forms, to make his employer's peculiar 
humors and ways of thinking tributary to his own amuse- 
ment. 

Keimer, without any analytical power of mind, or any 
real ability to reason, had, nevertheless, what is quite as 
common with such persons, as with truly skilful and 
profound logicians, an inordinate propensity to argu- 
mentation — a propensity which no more implies the 
power of legitimate reasoning, than cunning implies 
true wisdom — and, for a time at least, nothing seemed 
to please hTm so well as to draw Benjamin into discus- 
sion. When thus engaged, the latter would ply his an- 
tagonist with the Socratic method, in the use of which, 
as we have seen, he had made himself very adroit. 
Pressed by this mode of conducting a controversy, 
Keimer pretty soon began to find himself so frequently 
and unexpectedly entangled in his own concessions, by 
means of questions, the bearings of which he did not 
perceive, and which seemed to him, when put, wholly 
unconnected with any point under consideration, but 
which were shortly seen to be gradually involving the 



68 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

whole issue, and bringing him into contradictions and 
other difficulties, that at last, says Franklin, he grew so 
ridiculously cautious, that he would hardly answer the 
most common question, without first asking — " What 
do you mean by that? — What do you intend to infer 
from that?" 

The readiness with which Benjamin, in these debates, 
vanquished his antagonist, co-operating with the exalted 
self-esteem of the latter, led to a singular result. Keimer 
received so profound a conviction of the subtlety and 
skill which had discomfited him and which must, there- 
fore, his self-complacency inferred, yet more surely 
overmaster others, that he now announced, with much 
gravity, a scheme he had, he said, been long meditating, 
for founding a new sect in religion ; and he zealously 
urged his young journeyman to unite with him to carry 
it into effect. What the particular vagaries of Keimer's 
brain were, which were to constitute the fundamental 
articles of the new faith, Franklin has very properly 
deemed not worth recording; but whatever they may 
have been, Keimer himself was to be the great pro- 
pounder and teacher of the new doctrines, while his 
young associate was to do the controversial part and 
shut the mouth of cavil. 

Of course Benjamin's native common sense did not 
permit him to give a moment's serious thought to the 
crazy project ; but thinking it fair game for ridicule, he 
affected to listen to it, with the view of extracting some 
amusement from its projector. Among the external 
badges, which were to mark the disciples of the new 
creed, Keimer proposed to adopt two of his own per- 
sonal customs, that of wearing the beard entire, and 
that of observing the seventh day of the week as the 
sabbath. 

Benjamin, even at that early age, entertained but a 



NEW SECT CHANGE OF DIET. 69 

poor opinion of all those eccentric whimsies about things 
merely external and formal, which contain no germ of 
moral improvement, to compensate for the inconveni- 
ence they occasion, by clashing with the prevalent 
usages of society ; and still less did he value anything 
merely for its oddity. A stipulation, however, not to 
"mar the corners of the beard," could not much em- 
barrass a youth of eighteen; and the observance of 
Saturday as a day of rest, could occasion little inconve- 
nience, while he continued at work where he then was ; 
so he allowed himself to accede to the two propositions 
mentioned, but only on the condition, however, that the 
destined founder of the new sect should, on his part, 
renounce all animal food. 

Keimer winced at this condition, for he was, as it 
appears, uncommonly partial to meat, and a voracious 
feeder. " I doubt my constitution will not bear a total 
abstinence from flesh" — said the meat-loving and reluct- 
ant Keimer. " O, yes it will, and you will be the better 
for it" — said Benjamin. For the sake of the new re- 
ligion and the general welfare, however, the Reformer, 
after some hesitation, consented to make the proposed 
trial, provided his fellow-laborer would join him in it; to 
which the latter promptly agreed. 

The compact thus made, was adhered to, as Franklin 
states, for three months ; the provisions being procured, 
cooked, and served to them, by a woman dwelling near 
by, pursuant to a list, furnished by Benjamin, descri- 
bing '* forty dishes into which there entered neither 
fish, flesh, nor fowl." ^ This diet had the further recom- 
mendation that it cost them barely " eighteen-pence ster- 
ling each, per week." Benjamin went on very comfor- 
tably under the new victualling compact; ''but poor 
Keimer suffered grievously, grew tired of the project, 
longed for the flesh-pots of Egypt, and ordered a roast 



70 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

pig." Benjamin and two other acquaintances were in- 
vited to tiie feast on this occasion ; but the dinner hap- 
pening to be served rather early, Keimer was unable to 
resist the savory temptation, and before the guests ar- 
rived, eat up the pig. 

In relating these incidents Franklin states that, in the 
subsequent course of his life, he " kept Lent," at vari- 
ous times, in the strictest manner, abruptly quitting his 
ordinary diet, and as abruptly returning to it ; and hav- 
ing done so without any injury whatever, he concluded 
that the usual advice to make such changes gi'adually, 
was of little value. 

Another affair, however, was going on, at this period, 
of far more serious import to the parties, than anything 
connected with the fantastic Keimer. This was Benja- 
min's courtship of Miss Read, for whom he had begun 
to cherish " a great respect and affection, and had some 
reasons to believe that she had the same" for him. But 
they were yet very young, each having seen little more 
than eighteen years, and he being about to undertake 
a distant voyage, uncertain as to its results. 

Under such circumstances, the prudent mother of 
Miss Read interposed so far as to caution the young 
people against involving themselves in any needless en- 
gagements, which would, at that time, be deemed inju- 
dicious, and which might subsequently become the oc- 
casion of embarrassment and regret ; adding that, how- 
ever much disposed they might be to marry, and however 
unobjectionable such a union might be ultimately con- 
sidered, it would be best, at least, to defer it, until after 
Benjamin's return from England, when his condition 
would be more settled, and he would better understand 
his own prospects. The mother's advice was substan- 
tially followed. 



HIS ASSOCIATES. 71 



CHAPTER VIII. 

benjamin's way of life SAILS FOR ENGLAND. 

By this time, also, Benjamin had formed several val- 
uable as well as agreeable acquaintances among persons 
of his own sex and time of life. Of the young men, 
who had become his principal and most intimate asso- 
ciates, he has given the names of Charles Osborne, Jo- 
seph Watson, and James Ralph — *' all lovers of read- 
ing" — and obviously, from his account of them, all of 
them possessing more than ordinary abilities and attain- 
ments. Osborne and Watson, it appears, were clerks 
in the office of Charles Brockden, a very reputable con- 
veyancer ; and Ralph was a clerk in a respectable mer- 
cantile house. 

Of Watson he relates that he ** was a pious, sensible 
young man, of great integrity ; and although the other 
two were " more lax in their principles of religion," 
yet, in other respects, they seem clearly to have been 
attractive companions. Osborne is described as " sen- 
sible, candid, frank ; sincere and affectionate to his 
fi-iends ; but, in literary matters, too fond of criticism;" 
Ralph as being easy and graceful in his manners, inge- 
nious, eloquent, and a particularly agreeable talker; and 
both, not only gi'eat lovers of poetry, but occasionally 
trying their own skill in verse. 

In the occasional conversation of these young men. 



72 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

respecting their tastes, and views in life, Ralph, it ap- 
pears, showed a strong predilection for poetry, and de- 
clared his confident belief that, by cultivating it assid- 
uously, he could win both fame and fortune. Osborne 
thought difterently, and urged his friend to apply him- 
self strictly to business ; insisting that he had no true 
genius for poetry, but that by making himself an accom- 
plished merchant and accountant, he might, though with- 
out capital, obtain the agency of some wealthy house, 
and in time become a partner, or acquire the means of 
trading on his own account. Franklin adhered to the 
opinion, which, as has been seen, he had formed years 
before, that it was useful to cultivate poetry, or practise 
versification, for the sake of acquiring a readier com- 
mand of language and a more vaiied power of expres- 
sion ; but no further. 

The declaration of these opinions led to a proposal 
that they should, at their next meeting, each present a 
performance in verse, composed by himself, to be sub- 
mitted to their respective critical remarks, for the sake 
of mutual improvement. The object being improve- 
ment in language and style simply, it was agreed that 
invention, or originality of conception, was not to be 
considered ; and, in order to confine themselves strictly 
to the end in view, they appointed for their task, the 
eighteenth psalm, describing the descent of Deity, to 
be rendered in verse. 

A day or two before the next meeting, Ralph called 
on Franklin, showed him his performance, which was 
exceedingly well done, and finding that Franklin had 
been too busy to prepare anything himself for the meet- 
ing, Ralph proposed a trap for Osborae, to expose his 
hypercritical spirit, and bring home, to his own con- 
sciousness, a clear perception of his undue propensity 
to cavil. "Osborne will never allow the least merit in 



A TRAP FOR OSBORNE. 73 

anything of mine," said Ralph, "but makes a thousand 
criticisms out of mere envy. He is not so jealous of 
you. I wish, therefore, you would produce this piece 
as yours. I will pretend not to have had time, and will 
produce nothing. We shall then hear what he will say 
to it." This was agreed to ; and Franklin transcribed 
the piece, so that it should appear in his own hand-wri- 
ting. The result is given in Franklin's own words, as 
follows : — 

"We met; Watson's performance was read; there 
were some beauties in it, but many defects. Osborne's 
was much better; Ralph did it justice; remarked some 
faults, but applauded the beauties. He had himself 
nothing to produce. I was backward, seemed desirous 
of being excused, had not had sufficient time to correct, 
&c. ; but no excuse could be admitted ; produce I must. 
It was read and repeated ; Watson and Osborne gave 
up the contest, and joined in applauding it. Ralph only 
made a few criticisms, and proposed some amendments ; 
but I defended the text. Osborn was severe against 
Ralph, and told him he was no better able to criticise 
than compose verses. As these two were returning 
home, Osborne expressed himself still more strongly in 
favor of what he thought my production, having before 
refrained, as he said, lest I should think he meant to 
flatter me. * But who could have imagined,' said he, 
* that Franklin was capable of such a performance ; such 
painting, such force, such fire ! In common conversa- 
tion he seems to have no choice of words ; he hesitates 
and blunders ; yet how he writes !' When we next 
met, Ralph disclosed the trick, and Osborne was laughed 
at." A sufficiently efficacious remedy, one would think, 
this must have been, against the further exhibition of 
Osborne's hypercritical spleen, at least in presence of 
the same circle of companions. 
7 



74 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

In the absence of any recorded notice of the particu- 
lar studies of young Franklin, at this period of his life, 
these anecdotes may funiish some indication that his 
course of reading must probably have been as varied 
and extensive, as the intervals of his regular employ- 
ment, and the access to books, at that day, in the city 
where he dwelt, w^ould permit ; and they seem to claim 
insertion, not only for that reason, nor merely as amu- 
sino- incidents, but still more as illustrations of charac- 
ter and of some of the influences under which his own 
was then unfolding. 

Of the young men just introduced to the reader, as 
the names of Watson and Osborne do not occur, in con- 
nection with the subject of our narrative, at any subse- 
quent stage of its progress, it may be interesting to 
state, that Watson, to use the words of Franklin, *'died 
in his arms a few years later, much lamented, being the 
best of the set;" and that Osbonie established himself 
as a lawyer, in the West Indies, where he acquired both 
distinction and wealth, and yet died in the prime of 
manhood. 

The connection of Ralph, with young Franklin, con- 
tinued much longer^ and was attended by more serious 
consequences, which, however, do not yet call for no- 
tice. It will be sufficient to state, here, that his incli- 
nation to give himself to poetry, was naturally and not 
a little strengthened by the incident already related; 
and, in spite of dissuasion, **he continued scribbling 
verses," says Franklin, ''till Pope cured him." He 
went, as will be seen, with Franklin, in the Annis, to 
London, where he afterward passed most of his life. 
He acquired considerable prominence as a prose writer, 
and lived by his pen, which he employed frequently in 
the service of the ministerial party. Besides numerous 
political pamphlets, and some more elaborate historical 



RALPH — Keith's letters — miss read. 75 

performances of conceded ability, he produced various 
dramatic pieces and poems of less merit. Among these 
last, was a poem entitled " Nig/it," and one called 
" Sawne?/,'' the latter containing some abuse of Pope 
and Swift ; and the ciire above alluded to, was admin- 
istered in the celebrated *' Dunciad," in the following 
couplet : — 

" Silence, ye wolves, while Ralph to Cynthia howls. 
Making Night hideous ; answer him, ye owls !" 

These particulars are gathered chiefly from a note 
compiled by the vigilant and learned editor of the latest, 
most complete and valuable edition of the writings of 
Franklin, where it is also stated that Ralph was, " for 
many years, the confidential associate of ministers and 
courtiers ;" and that a little before his death, which oc- 
curred in 1762, the moderate pension, on which he had 
long lived, was increased to six hundred pounds ster- 
ling, through the influence of Lord Bute. 

While Franklin was thus working for Keimer, and 
occupying the greater part of his leisure with books, 
and with the companions mentioned, Sir William Keith 
continued his friendly attentions to him, inviting him 
frequently to his house, often adverting to the plan of 
setting him up in business, and always treating it as " a 
fixed thing," awaiting only the coming on of time, to be 
fully accomplished. Sir William was to furnish him, 
not only with various recommendatory letters to efficient 
and influential friends in London, but also with a letter 
of credit, on which the money to pay for the press, 
types, and other requisite materials for the new print- 
ing-office, was to be obtained. 

These very essential documents, however, though of- 
ten promised, were as often delayed, from time to time, 
till the A?mis was on the very eve of sailing ; and even 
then, when Benjamin made his last call, to receive the 



76 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

letters and take leave of the governor, instead of being 
enabled to do either, Sir William sent out his secretary 
to say that he was just then extremely busy, but that 
he would be down at Newcastle sooner than the ship, 
and that the letters should there be delivered to him. 

Benjamin, therefore, after exchanging pledges of affec- 
tion and fidelity, with Miss Read, and bidding his other 
friends good-by, went on board, and the packet dropped 
down the Delaware to Newcastle. Governor Keith was, 
indeed, there ; but when Benjamin once more went to his 
lodgings, his secretary again presented himself, with the 
deep regrets of the governor, that business of the ut- 
most importance, demanding his whole attention and 
immediate execution, so engrossed him, that it would 
prevent his seeing his young friend, but that he would 
send the letters for him on boaixi in good season, and 
wished him a pleasant voyage and a speedy return. 
With this parting message, Benjamin, not a little puz- 
zled, but still confiding, repaired on board the Annis. 

The other persons, who had taken passage for Eng- 
land in the same vessel, were Andrew Hamilton, an em- 
inent lawyer of Philadelphia, and his son James, who, 
some years after, became governor of the province of 
Pennsylvania ; a Quaker merchant named Denham ; 
Messrs. Oniam and Russell, iron-masters, whose works 
were situated in Maryland; and James Ralph, with 
whom we already have some acquaintance. The entire 
cabin of the Annis had been engaged by these per- 
sons, except Ralph; so that he and Benjamin had to 
bestow themselves in the steerage, and being unknovni 
to the other passengers, they were supposed to be per- 
sons of little consequence. 

While the packet was waiting at Newcastle, however, 
the Hamiltons returned to Philadelphia, the father having 
been drawn back ''by a gi*eat fee, to plead for a seized 



VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 77 

ship;" and Governor Keith's fi'iend,Colonel French, com- 
ing on board just before the Annis set sail, and being ob- 
served to pay marked respect to Benjamin, it produced 
such an improved estimate of the quality of the young 
man, that he and his friend Ralph soon received an in- 
vitation from the other passengers, to take the berths 
and other accommodations in the cabin, which had been 
so opportunely vacated by Mr. Hamilton and his son. 
This invitation w^as gladly accepted. 

It being understood that Colonel French had brought 
on board despatches from Governor Keith, Benjamin 
took it for granted that now, at last, with thetn had 
come the long-promised letters intended for himself; 
and naturally wishing to have them in his own keeping, 
he applied for them to the captain of the ship. He was 
answered, however, that his letters with all others going 
out, were in the bag together, and that they could not 
then be conveniently got hold of; but that, before land- 
ing in England, he should have ample opportunity to 
obtain possession of them. Contenting himself with 
this assurance, he laid aside all further concern on that 
score, and opened his mind to the reception of such new 
impressions as the voyage and its incidents should fur- 
nish. 

Only a very brief notice of this outward voyage has 
been left by Franklin. From that, however, it appears 
that the company in the cabin fared uncommonly well, 
inasmuch as the stores provided by Mr. Hamilton, being 
left in the ship, made the supply unusually abundant; 
and the passengers found themselves sufficiently agree- 
able to each other, to render the passage a pleasant one 
inboard ; but in other respects it was made uncomforta- 
ble by the general prevalence of rough weather. Of 
the incidents which occurred on board, by far the most 
interesting one to Benjamin, was his acquisition of the 

7* 



78 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

friendship of his Quaker fellow-passenger, Mr. Den- 
ham — a friendship, which soon proved exceedingly use- 
ful to him, and ultimately led to a closer and more im- 
portant connection, and which continued without inter- 
ruption, or disturbance, till it was forever sundered by 
death. 

While going up the British channel, Benjamin had 
the promised opportunity to overhaul the letter-bag. 
Finding several letters bearing his own name as the 
person who was to take charge of them, with some oth- 
ers, which, judging by the names of those to whom 
they were addressed and other tokens, seemed intended 
for his use, he took possession of them. But, alas for 
the good-faith of pretended friendship and for the hopes 
it had inspired, the sequel showed that all these letters 
were utterly worthless, and that this youth had been 
cruelly cheated by the smooth-tongued deceiver, who 
was then the governor of Pennsylvania. 



ARRIVES AT LONDON. 79 



CHAPTER IX. 

RESULT OF THE VOYAGE PENJAMIN's FIRST EXPERIEN- 
CES IN LONDON. 

The passengers of the Annis reached London in safe- 
ty, on the 24th of December, 1724; and Benjamm 
w^asted no time before making use of the documents, 
from vv^hich he had been induced to expect so much 
benefit. One of the letters bearing the address of a 
Mr. Basket, designated as the King's printer, and an- 
other being directed to a stationer, whose name is not 
given, Benjamin, naturally inferring, from the occupa- 
tions of the men whose names they bore, that these two 
letters would be found to relate, most directly and ma- 
terially, to the main object of his voyage, selected them 
for immediate delivery. 

The stationer happening to be nearest by, to him Ben- 
jamin first proceeded. Finding him in his shop, he 
handed the letter to him, saying, as he did so, what he 
of course took for granted was the fact, that it was from 
Sir "William Keith, governor of the province of Penn- 
sylvania. The stationer remarked that he did not know 
any such person, but took the letter, and opening it cast 
his eye upon the signature, when he suddenly exclaimed 
— *'0, this is from Riddlesden ! I have lately found 
him to be a complete rascal ; and I will have nothing to 
do with him, nor receive any letters from him." So, 



80 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

handing back the unread epistle, ''he turned on his 
heel," says Franklin, *' and left me, to serve a customer." 

In short, the upshot of this affair was, that not one of 
the letters, on which so many hopes had been built, was 
written by Keith ; and now looking back upon his con- 
duct, in the new light poured upon it, Benjamin began, 
for the first time, to entertain doubts of the honesty and 
good faith of Sir William Keith, the governor of Penn- 
sylvania. 

Startled by such a result, and filled with apprehen- 
sions, arising from the predicament, in which that result 
placed him, Benjamin straightway sought out his late fel- 
low-passenger, Denham, and laid the whole matter, from 
first to last, fully before him. The intelligent and fair- 
minded Quaker merchant at once let his young friend 
into, what he was not before aware had been a secret to 
him — the real character of his professing patron. Mr. 
Denham told Benjamin that there was not the slightest 
probability that Keith had either written, or had seri- 
ously intended to write, a single letter for his benefit, 
notwithstanding all his solemn pledges and hospitable 
attentions ; that nobody, having any knowledge of Sir 
William and his ways, placed the smallest dependence 
on his most earnest assurances ; and he laughed heartily 
at the very idea of a letter -of-cr edit from a man, who 
possessed not a particle of that valuable commodity for 
his own use, or for the service of others. 

Faithless, heartless, and disgraceful as the conduct 
of Sir William Keith was in this affair, yet, after all, 
his character, in its general elements at least, was not, 
we suspect, a very uncommon one. He seems to have 
been one of those sociable, good-humored, and smiling, 
but selfish and thick-skinned men, who, though posses- 
sing some agreeable and useful qualities, and often "ex- 
hibiting considerable talents for business, yet have no 



Keith's perfidy — his character. 81 

very clear perception of many of the differences between 
right and wrong, and appear unable to recognise them, 
unless in a coarse way and in the broadest cases ; who, 
though perhaps seldom actuated by any cherished mal- 
ice, yet have no well-settled moral principles for the 
uniform regulation of their own conduct ; men of cold 
affections, and little real sympathy, but of sanguine 
temperament, lively animal spirits, much self-compla- 
cency, addicted to company, voluble talkers, fond of no- 
toriety, with but little sense of honor and shame, ready 
with expedients, and eager for place and influence. 

Such men are very apt to play the patron, not so 
much, however, for the sake of their clients, as for their 
own; and some calculation of advantage to himself, 
seems very likely to have suggested to Keith, the expe- 
diency of affecting to patronise Benjamin, and to have 
led him to obtrude himself and his proffers of assistance 
upon a youth of so much promise. 

Franklin closes his account of Sir William and their 
connection, with a short comment which, considering 
the heartlessness and wanton cruelty of Keith's usage 
of him, bears the most unequivocal testimony to that 
spirit of candor and forbearance, which marked and 
adorned his own character, through life. 

"What shall we think," says Franklin, *' of a gov- 
ernor playing such pitiful tricks and imposing so grossly 
on a poor ignorant boy^ It was a hahit he had ac- 
quired. He wished to please everybody ; and having 
little else to give, he gave expectations. He was, oth- 
erwise, an ingenious and sensible man ; a pretty good 
writer ; and a good governor for the people, though not 
for his constituents, the Proprietaries, whose instruc- 
tions he sometimes disregarded. Several of our best 
laws were of his planning, and passed during his ad- 
ministration." 



82 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

But the fraud, which had been practised upon Benja- 
min, was not the only piece of treachery brought to 
light by this letter of Riddlesden. This man was an 
attorney in Philadelphia, and both Mr. Denham and 
Benjamin were as fully aware as the stationer, that Rid- 
dlesden was a thorough-going knave. His letter, writ- 
ten under the expectation that Andrew Hamilton, who 
had been suddenly recalled from Newcastle to Phila- 
delphia, was going to England in the Annis, betrayed 
the fact that a plot was going on, to injure Mr. Hamil- 
ton, and that Keith and Riddlesden were the plotters. 

Mr. Denham, who was a friend of Mr. Hamilton's, 
very justly thought that gentleman should be informed 
of the mischief that was hatching; and when he reached 
London, as he did, not very long after, in another ves- 
sel, Benjamin called on him and gave him the letter. 
" He thanked me cordially," says Franklin many years 
later, '* the information being of importance to him ; 
and from that time he became my friend, greatly to my 
advantage afterward, on many occasions." 

By the shameful and wanton perfidy of Keith, thus, 
without an acquaintance in London, except one or two 
of his own countrymen, who were shortly to return 
home — with very scanty means of support, and these 
soon to be exhausted, unless he should be able to pro- 
cure employment, was Benjamin, a youth of eighteen, 
a stranger from another land, left exposed to the perils 
of a great city. Happy for him, was it, then, that he 
had a trade. For a poor unfriended youth, without 
money, or connections, there is, under Providence, no 
better reliance than the possession of one of those hon- 
est and useful mechanical arts, which belong, perma- 
nently, to the very structure of civilized society, and are 
essential to the ordinary and daily recurring wants and 
uses of the community. With such a resource, no hon- 



HOW SITUATED IN LONDON. 83 

est and right-minded person, young, or old, needs de- 
spond, while he has health, and cherishes a spark of 
genuine self-respect, or has any just sense of the true 
respectability and virtue of useful self-sustaining labor. 

With these manly sentiments in his breast, and w^ith 
the advice and sympathy of his friend Denham to en- 
courage him, Benjamin at once set about finding em- 
ployment. This he soon procured, at Palmer's, " a fa- 
mous printing-house in Bartholomew Close," where he 
remained nearly a year. Stranger as he was in Lon- 
don, the only person with whom he could have anything 
like intimate companionship, was Ralph, and they were 
a great deal together. They took lodgings in that part 
of the city called Little Britain, at three shillings and 
sixpence sterling a week for each. 

At this time, Ralph acquainted Benjamin with his de- 
termination never to return to Philadelphia. His whole 
stock of money having been exhausted in paying the ex- 
penses of his voyage, he was now destitute ; and though 
he had some family relatives in London, yet they were 
too poor to render him any assistance. He had, there- 
fore, no resource but dependence upon Benjamin, who 
possessed a small fund of fifteen pistoles, about fifty 
dollars, and who furnished his friend with what money 
was necessary for his subsistence, while he was looking 
about for employment. 

This connection proved, as in the case of Collins, 
another considerable burden, for the time being, to Ben- 
jamin; and, ultimately, he had to sustain a total loss of 
the money thus generously furnished ; for Ralph, after 
trying in vain to procure an engagement, as a play-ac- 
tor, at one of the theatres, then proposed to a publisher, 
to write for him a weekly paper on the plan of the 
Spectator. His terms, however, not proving accepta- 
ble, he next sought employment, as a scrivener, among 



84 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

the stationers and lawyers of the Middle Temple, and 
its purlieus ; but still without success, as he could find 
no vacancy. 

To Benjamin, with his trade, in which, for so expert 
and efficient a workman as he was, employment might 
be considered certain, the danger of not being able 
to provide a decent and comfortable subsistence, was 
scarcely worth a moment's anxiety. In such a city as 
London, however, there were other perils, of a graver 
nature, needing more energy of character and more 
strength of virtuous resolution, in a youth of eighteen, 
of social disposition and ardent temperament, to pass 
safely through ; and in reference to these perils, his 
companion Ralph was no help to him. 

During the customary working hours, Benjamin was 
sufficiently diligent and attentive to his duties as a jour- 
neyman. His evenings, however, were generally, at 
this period, devoted to mere diversion ; especially to 
visiting the play-houses and other places of public 
amusement. On these occasions Ralph was usually his 
associate ; and as he had himself to defray the expenses 
of both, his pistoles rapidly melted away, together with 
a considerable portion of his wages besides. Ralph 
seemed to have forgotten the wife and child he had left 
behind him at Philadelphia ; and Benjamin, as he sub- 
sequently confesses, gave little attention to the duties 
imposed on him, by his engagements with Miss Read, to 
whom he wrote "but one letter, and tliat was to let her 
know he was not likely soon to return." 

This was an unwarrantable neglect of duty ; and 
long after, in writing his own account of his conduct, in 
this respect, he had the honesty to admit it ; pronoun- 
cing it *' one of the great errata of his life, which he 
should wish to coiTect, if he were to live his life over 
again." In point of fact, his inability to go back to 



, PERILS IN LONDON. 85 

Philadelphia, was owing to the expenses incurred by 
himself and his companion, which prevented his accu- 
mulating a sum sufficient to meet the charges of a re- 
turn voyage. But the want of money was not now the 
chief impediment in the path of his duty. Notwith- 
standing that want, he could easily have performed at 
least a part of his obligations, by keeping up a corre- 
spondence with one to whom he had plighted his love 
and truth ; and the mere fact that he disregarded an ob- 
ligation so plain and so easy to fulfil, speaks, with more 
emphasis, than even his own honest confession, of the 
perils to which the perfidy of Keith had exposed him, 
and of the downward tendencies of that pagan manner 
of living, the temptations of which he was now begin- 
ning to feel with bounding pulses and sparkling eyes. 
There is, in truth, nothing in human life that produces 
such intense selfishness, or so soon hardens the heart 
and benumbs the conscience, as those forms of self-in- 
dulgence, which are found exclusively in the gratifica- 
tion of the senses and in mere amusement. 

In the same house in Little Britain, in which Ben- 
jamin and Ralph lodged, a young woman, who was en- 
gaged in business as a milliner, also had lodgings, 
though she kept her shop in another building in the 
neighborhood. She is designated in Franklin's narra- 
tive, simply as Mrs. T. ; and she seems to have been a 
young widow with one child. She is described as be- 
ing a sensible and sprightly person, of attractive man- 
ners, and of uncommonly agreeable conversation. Ralph 
not unfrequently passed his evenings in reading plays 
to her ; and their intercourse shortly became too inti- 
mate to continue innocent. It was not long, therefore, 
before she changed her lodgings, and he soon joining 
her, they dwelt together for several weeks. But he not 
having yet been able to procure any regular employ- 

8 



86 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ment, and the avails of her business being too scanty 
to support both themselves and her child, he left Lon- 
don, after a while, to seek employment, in the country, 
as teacher of a village-school, for which he felt himself 
amply qualified, by his skill in penmanship, arithmetic, 
and keeping accounts. 

With the false pride, however, which formed a con- 
trolling element of his character, though not ashamed of 
his licentious conduct, he deemed the useful and there- 
fore honorable occupation of teaching a school, beneath 
his deserts and dignity. To prevent his being ever 
traced back to that occupation, when, at any subsequent 
period, he should have attained a position more worthy, 
in his own estimation, of his capacity and merit, he 
dropped his true family name, and did Franklin " the 
honor," as the latter words it, '*to assume 7m." This 
circumstance was disclosed to Benjamin by receiving, 
not long after, a letter from Ralph, dated at an obscure 
village in Berkshire, informing him that he was engaged 
in teaching some ten or twelve boys to read, write, and 
cipher, for sixpence a week each ; recommending also 
his friend, the milliner, to Benjamin's kind offices, and 
requesting him to address his letters to *' Mr. FranJdin, 
schoolmaster,^' at the village alluded to. 

The instruction of his little pupils was, of course, a 
light task for Ralph's active mind, and in the leisure 
and seclusion of his present situation, turning to what 
we have already seen was his favorite pursuit, he under- 
took the composition of an epic poem. The subject and 
title of the poem are not stated ; but in his frequent 
letters to Benjamin he enclosed copious specimens of 
it, requesting the favor of his remarks and strictures 
thereon, in the spirit of free and independent criticism. 
Benjamin complied, with freedom and candor, but at 
the same time, and with right judgment, too, "endeav- 



MISCONDUCT RELIEVED FROM RALPH. 87 

ored to discourage his proceeding." With this view, 
he took the trouble to transcribe the greater portion of 
a then newly-published satire from the pen of the cele- 
brated Dr. Young, author of the " Night Thouglits''' — 
the work by which its author is most generally known 
in this country, being held in high estimation by the 
more sedate and meditative lovers of poetry among us ; 
and which, though containing some offences against 
taste, particularly in its occasional extravagance of ex- 
pression, does, nevertheless, abound with lofty and ele- 
vating views, and with just as well as striking and bril- 
liant thoughts and images, presented, for the most part, 
in a style of remarkable vigor and varied beauty. The 
satire, so much of which was thus disinterestedly trans- 
scribed for Ralph's benefit, ** set in a strong light," says 
Franklin, "■ the folly of pursuing the muses ; but all 
was in vain, and sheets of the poem continued to come, 
by every post." 

About this time, moreover, the female already men- 
tioned, who had forfeited the favor of her friends and 
lost her business, by means of her connection with 
Ralph, often, in her distress, sent for Benjamin, who 
generously supplied what money he could spare, for her 
relief. This was a dangerous intercourse for the young 
man. His account of it clearly shows that her applica- 
tions for assistance, proceeded from actual and extreme 
penury on her part, and honorably acquits her of any 
artful design of entrapping him. But this freedom from 
all craft and subtlety toward him, only increased his 
danger ; and in his sympathy for a person of her attrac- 
tive qualities and infirm virtue, it was but too natural 
that he should soon feel other and less pure impulses 
mingling with his benevolence. The result is best re- 
lated in his own words : — 

"I grew fond," says he, "of her company; and be- 



88 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ing at that time under no^ligious restraint, and taking 
advantage of my importance to her, I attempted to take 
some liberties with her (another erratum), which she 
repulsed with a proper degree of resentment. She 
wrote to Ralph and acquainted him with my conduct. 
This occasioned a breach between us ; and when he re- 
turned to London, he let me know he considered all the 
obligations he had been under to me, as annulled ; from 
which I concluded I was never to expect his repaying 
the money I had lent him, or had advanced for him. 
This, however, was of little consequence, as he was 
totally unable ; and by the loss of his friendship, I 
found myself relieved from a heavy burden." 

This result was unquestionably fortunate for Benja- 
min, for the sake of his morals, not less than his pocket ; 
and though his conduct, in one particular, was culpa- 
ble, yet his ingenuous confession of his fault, his honest 
self-condemnation, and his just reference to fixed reli- 
gious principle, as the truest and surest restraint upon 
the passions, make some amends for his transgression ; 
while his generous readiness to relieve distress, is wor- 
thy of imitation, as well as praise. 

The conduct of Ralph, however, presents no compen- 
sating traits, and was in good keeping with the spuri- 
ous pride he had manifested, in reference to the em- 
ployment of a schoolmaster. In changing his name, he 
had committed a fraud, not only upon the community in 
which he was residing, but also, according to his own 
estimate of his occupation there, upon the friend whose 
name he pilfered ; and in pretending to consider his 
actual debt, to say nothing of gratitude, to Benjamin, as 
cancelled, when he broke friendship with him, he was 
only adding more than common meanness, to more than 
common dishonesty. True self-respect or dignity of 
sentiment, if he had possessed a particle of either, 



NEW ACQUAINTANCES. 89 

would have rendered him more than ordinarily anxious 
to relieve himself from the sense of obligation, under 
such circumstances, not by repudiating a debt incurred 
as that was, but by making his most strenuous exertions 
to pay it, at the earliest possible day, to the very last 
farthing. But this unprincipled man will trouble us, as 
he troubled his abused friend, no further. 

While Benjamin was working in Palmer's printing- 
office, he was employed in setting the types for a new 
edition of Wollaston's ^^ Religion of Nature;'''' and as 
he deemed some of the reasonings in that work un- 
sound, he controverted them, in a metaphysical tract, 
which he then wrote, entitled ^'A Dissertation of Lib- 
erty and Necessity — Pleasure and Pain,''^ a few copies 
of which he printed. That performance is not now ex- 
tant ; but from the terms in which Franklin himself 
mentions it, the inference is, that it must have given a 
very free expression of the religious unbelief, which at 
that period possessed his mind. Speaking of it, at a 
long subsequent period, when he cherished very differ- 
ent sentiments, he says : "It occasioned my being more 
considered by Mr. Palmer, as a young man of some in- 
genuity, though he seriously expostulated with me, upon 
the principles of my pamphlet, which to him appeared 
abominable. My printing this pamphlet was another 
errattim.^^ 

This dissertation, however objectionable on account 
of its opinions — and his own censure of it is likely to 
have been just — contributed, nevertheless, to extend his 
circle of acquaintance ; and the enlarged opportunity 
thus obtained for observing life and character, served to 
give a wider variety to his subjects of thought and fresh 
impulse to his mental activity. The extension of his 
social intercourse, on this occasion, took place through 
the agency of a man named Lyons, a surgeon by pro- 

8* 



90 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

fession, who had published^ treatise on *' The Infalli- 
bility of Human Judgment.'' Lyons having accident- 
ally met with young Franklin's pamphlet, read it, and 
finding in it, doubtless, some opinions harmonizing with 
his own, and probably also some indications of an ori- 
ginal way of thinking, he sought out the author, became 
exceedingly fond of his conversation, courted his soci- 
ety, and introduced him to a club which he was him- 
self in the habit of frequenting. 

The most noted person with whom Benjamin became 
acquainted at that club, was Mandeville, author of " The 
Fable of the Bees'' — a work which enjoyed for a time 
considerable celebrity, but has latterly been little read. 
It inculcates the pernicious doctrine that private vices 
are public benefits, inasmuch as they give a wider range 
to the wants of men, and by thus multiplying the em- 
ployments of the community, augment the demand and 
the compensation for labor — a doctrine, which the great 
Apostle to the Gentiles could not have sanctioned, as it is 
only another way of saying, " Let us do evil, that good 
may come." 

Mandeville himself is described as being a man of 
very entertaining conversation, of a facetious turn, and 
"the soul" of the club that gathered around him. For 
that very reason, however, he was only the more dan- 
gerous a companion for those whose principles were not 
firmly settled. Lyons also introduced Benjamin to one 
Dr. Pemberton, who promised him an opportunity to 
see the celebrated Sir Isaac Newton, then approaching 
the close of his long and illustrious career. But that 
opportunity, though eagerly coveted, never came. The 
great philosopher was then, 1725, in his 84th year, and 
died on the 20th of March, 1726, almost as much dis- 
tinguished beyond the common lot, in years as in fame. 

Another incident not unworthy of notice, in the ex- 



SIR HANS SLOANE ASBESTOS PURSE. 91 

perience of a journeyman printer, a youth of nineteen, 

and a stranger from a land beyond the ocean, was his 
becoming acquainted with Sir Hans Sloane, with the 
occasion of it. Among some rarities which Benjamin 

had taken with him from Philadelphia, was a purse 
made of asbestos, or, as it is sometimes called, amian- 
thus ; a kind of stone, which is not only inconsumable 
by fire, but so fibrous as to be separable into threads 
flexible enough to be compactly and smoothly woven ; 
and the webs made of it, when soiled by use, are cleaned 
by putting them into the fire, instead of a wash-tub. 

^ Benjamin, whose pistoles, with his friend Ralph's as- 
sistance, had run very low, having learned something 
of the character and tastes of Sir Hans, who was very 
much of a virtuoso, a lover and collector of rare and curi- 
ous things, addressed him a note, dated June 2d, 1725, in 
v^rhich he says : " Having lately been in the northern 
parts of America, I have brought thence a purse made of 
the asbestos, a piece of the stone, and a piece of wood 
the pithy part of which is of the same nature, and is 
called by the inhabitants there, salamander -cotton. As 
you are noted to be a lover of curiosities, I have in- 
formed you of these ; and if you have any inclination 
to purchase or see them, let me know your pleasure by 
a line for me at the Golden Fan, Little Britain, and I 
will wait upon you with them." On receiving the note. 
Sir Hans, instead of writing, called in person upon the 
young tradesman, whom he politely invited to his house 
in Bloomsbury square, showed him his extensive col- 
lections of things rare and curious, and finally pur- 
chased the inconsumable purse, paying for it handsome- 
ly, says Franklin, though he does not name the sum. 



92 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



CHAPTER X. 

BETTER HABITS IMPROVE HIS OWN CONDITION AND 
BENEFIT OTHERS. 

As soon as Benjamin had got rid of Ralph, he began to 
think of laying up some of his earnings ; and with a view 
to more productive employment also, he went from 
Palmer's to Watts's printing-house, a larger one near 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he continued as long as he 
remained in London. Upon entering this office he first 
worked at the press, for the sake of the bodily exercise 
it gives, which he felt the want of, and to which he had 
been accustomed in America, where press-work and 
case-work were in those days almost universally, and 
are even now to a considerable extent, performed by 
the same hands. 

Here he became an efficient and valuable promoter of 
temperance. He was a teetotaller himself, drinking only 
water; while the fifty other hands in the office were 
excessive drinkers of beer. For the sake of expediting 
his labor, or for convenience, he would now-and-then 
carry, up or down stairs, a large form of types in each 
hand, while others carried but one such form, with both 
hands. It was indeed unquestionable evidence of the 
power of his arms ; and his fellow- workmen wondered 
to see the strength of the " Water- American," as they 
called him, so much exceed their own, which had, as 



PRINTING-OFFICE USAGES. 93 

they fancied, been nonrished and increased by strong 
beer. So frequent were the calls for beer at that one 
establishment, that a boy, called the Ale-House Boy, was 
kept for no other purpose but to go and come with 
drink. 

The heavy drain upon the wages of the beer-drinkers, 
made by this practice, may be seen from the fact that 
Benjamin's companion in working the press, drank six 
pints a day regularly; that is to say, a pint before break- 
fast, a pint at breakfast, a pint between that meal and 
dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint about 6 o'clock, P. M., 
and a pint at the close of the day's work. And all this 
he did, in the opinion that it was necessary to give him 
strength ; an opinion still very common, in which, how- 
ever, is involved the serious error of mistaking the tran- 
sient effect of mere stimulation, for the permanent in- 
crease of muscular power. 

" I thought the custom detestable," says Franklin, 
*' and I endeavored to convince him that the bodily 
strength afforded by beer, could only be in proportion 
to the grain, or flour, of the barley, dissolved in the 
water of which it was made ; that there was more flour 
in a penny-worth of bread; and therefore, if he would 
eat that, with a pint of water, it would give him more 
strength than a quart of beer. He drank on, however, 
and had four or five shillings to pay out of his wages, 
every Saturday night, for that vile liquor ; an expense 
I was free from." No wonder that these mistaken hard- 
v^orking men always, as he says, "kept themselves 
under." 

Much to his own credit, as well as to the benefit of 
the whole set of hands at Watts's large printing-house, 
Benjamin exerted himself to reform some of their hab- 
its. His efforts were obstructed for a while, by his re- 
sisting the payment of a certain fee, alleged to be cus- 



94 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

tomary, but which he thought unfairly demanded. When 
he first went to this establishment, he began working, 
as we have seen, at press-work, and then paid his hien- 
venu, as it was called ; that is, his welcome fee. After a 
few weeks, however, Mr. Watts, needing more help at 
case-work, requested Benjamin to transfer himself to 
the composing-room. On doing so, the compositors de- 
manded of him another bien-venu. This he refused, and 
Mr. Watts also forbade his paying it. 

For this refusal, however, the compositors, of course, 
excommunicated him from all the privileges of their fel- 
lowship ; and while he thus lay under interdict, he was 
subjected to all manner of annoyance by vexatious 
tricks and practical jokes. His sorts of type were 
mixed in his cases ; his matter was broken and trans- 
posed, as it stood on the galleys ; or was thrown into 
pi, whenever he was for a moment absent. No remedy 
could be had, because all these naughty things were 
done by "the ghost of the cliapeV^ (as the rooms of a 
printing-office are termed by the craft), which always 
haunt every one, whose entrance is not according to the 
chapel canons, and nobody can be held responsible for 
what is done by a ghost. 

In short, there vv^as no protection for the refi'actory 
compositor, as long as he continued recusant ; and after 
persisting for two or three weeks in recusancy, he saw 
that the best thing he could do, was to pay the welcome 
money ; having, in the exercise of his good sense, come 
to the conclusion, that it is always foolish to be volun- 
tarily on ** ill terms with those you are to live with con- 
tinually." 

Being once placed on good terms and a fair footing 
with the whole body of his fellow- workmen, his shrewd- 
ness, good temper, ingenuity, and obliging disposition. 
Boon gave him, as usual, a leading influence with them, 



PRINTING-OFFICE REFORMS. 95 

I and enabled him to carry, against all opposition, several 
very sensible reforms in the laws of the chapel. His 
practice, with the results, which, daily and hourly, it 
placed directly before their eyes, and with especial em- 
phasis on every weekly pay-day, induced numbers of his 
fellow- workmen to change their habits and follow his ex- 
ample. Leaving their '' muddling breakfast of beer, 
bread, and cheese," they procured, with him, at a house 
near by, "■ a large porringer of hot water-gruel," not 
the meager drink prepared for invalids, but well thick- 
ened with crumbled bread, and . ivored and enriched 
with a sprinkle of pepper and " a bit of butter," all for a 
penny and a half, which was the price their pint of beer 
alone cost them. This was unquestionably " a more 
comfortable as well as a cheaper breakfast," than they 
had been accustomed to take, and it " kept their heads 
clearer." 

The other workmen, who " continued sotting it with 
their beer all day," he found to be, pretty generally, 
either in doubtful credit, or with none at all, at the ale- 
house ; and they became for the most part dependent on 
the water-drinker for money, or for his responsibility, 
to enable them to procure beer ; their own cash being 
exhausted, or, as they termed it, '' their Z^^7^^ being out." 
By keeping a vigilant eye on the pay-table, when pay- 
time came round, every Saturday, he secured himself, in 
the main, against loss on the sums of beer-money, for 
which he had agreed to become responsible, and which, 
at times, as he states, amounted to near thirty shillings 
in a single week. His willingness to confer favors of 
this sort, his uniform cheerfulness of spirit, his good 
temper, playful humor, and ready wit, with a turn for oc- 
casional jocular satire, or being what was called among 
them a good riggist, gave him a high rank among his 
associates of the printing-office ; while, at the same time, 



96 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

bis steady attendance a^ie office, without regard to St. 
Monday, or other holyday excuses for absence and idle- 
ness, secured the countenance and favor of his employ- 
er; and being a remarkably rapid compositor, such 
work as required despatch as well as accuracy, and 
therefore brought the highest pay, was put into his 
hands. *' So I went on," says he, "very agreeably." 

How soon the conduct and character of this young 
man, his ways of life, his usefulness to others not less 
than to himself, and his value as a man, began to improve 
— to rise on the scale of moral and social worth — when 
he had become relieved from the burden of Ralph, and 
had escaped from the misguiding and depraving influ- 
ences of his companionship ! Such benefits were no 
doubt cheaply purchased by the loss of the mere money 
paid on his account. In this connection it may also be 
mentioned that next door to his lodgings dwelt a man 
named Wilcox, a bookseller, who had a very large col- 
lection of second-hand books. He seems to have been 
a well-disposed and obliging man, and with him, for a 
trifling compensation, Benjamin made an arrangement, 
by which he was allowed to take, read, and return, any 
books in the collection ; and of this privilege, to him a 
precious one, he availed himself as fully as his regular 
employment would permit. 

About this time, however, Benjamin left his quarters 
in Little Britain, for others in Duke street, much nearer 
to his present place of daily labor. His new room was 
a back chamber, in the fourth story of a warehouse be- 
longing to his new hostess, in which were deposited va- 
rious wares of Italian manufacture, in which she was a 
dealer. 

This lady was a widow, and had a daughter living 
with her. She also kept a maid-servant to do her house- 
work, and a hired man to wait upon customers, in the 



HIS NEW HOSTESS. 97 

ware-room, during the business hours of the day, but 
at night he slept elsewhere. Upon obtaining from the 
people with whom Benjamin had been boarding in Lit- 
tle Britain, an account of his character and habits, she 
consented to receive him at the same price he had been 
paying, at the house he was about leaving, and that was 
three shillings and sixpence a week ; saying that she 
accepted such small pay, for the sake of the increased 
security, which she felt would follow from having such 
a lodger in the house. 

This worthy and kind-hearted widow, now far ad- 
vanced in years, was the daughter of a Protestant cler- 
gyman of the Church of England as by law established, 
and her father had reared and educated her in his own 
faith. But having married a gentleman of the Roman 
Catholic persuasion, he had converted her to his own 
creed and church, in which she still remained steadfast ; 
and she appeared, according to Franklin's estimate of 
her, to cherish her husband's memory with a deep and 
sincere feeling of affectionate respect. 

She had, moreover, as it is stated, been long and in- 
timately conversant with many families of high rank, 
some of which were distinguished for character and 
public services, as well as birth ; and concerning them 
she possessed, it is related, a rich and varied store of 
anecdotes, reaching back as far, in many instances, as 
the days of Charles II. ; thus covering, with interesting 
recollections, a period of more than forty years. This 
excellent and respectable woman had suffered long and 
much from gout in her knees, which had now become 
so weak that she was rarely able to leave her room, or, 
at times, even her chair. Company, therefore, espe- 
cially cheerful and quiet company, was very acceptable 
to her ; and "hers was so highly amusing to me," says 
Franklin, " that I was sure to spend an evening with 
9 



§8 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

her, whenever she desirWT it." Their supper, on these 
pleasant occasions, consisted of "half an anchovy for 
each, on a very little slice of bread and butter, and half 
a pint of ale for both ; but the entertainment was in 
her conversation." 

Benjamin was now so regular in his hours, gave so 
little trouble, and was in all respects so quiet and pleas- 
ant a boarder, that his hostess became solicitous to re- 
tain him ; and when he mentioned that he had heard of 
lodgings still nearer to his place of labor, to be had for 
only two shillings a week, and that such a saving, in his 
circumstances, was important to him, she at once told 
him not to think of going, for she would thenceforward 
keep him for eighteen pence per week : and he contin- 
ued with her, at that price, for the rest of his stay in 
London, 

The same house held another lodger, a female, whose 
history and way of life were not a little singular. She 
was a maiden lady of three-score and ten years, and 
she occupied a room in the garret, living in almost utter 
seclusion from society. She was a Roman Catholic, and 
when very young had been placed in a convent on the 
continent, with the design of making her a nun. The 
situation of the establishment, as it appears, however, 
proving unfavorable to her health, she left it and came 
back to England. But in England there were no nun- 
neries, nor convents of any kind ; and she was unable, 
therefore, to pursue the way of life to which she had 
vowed herself, according to the literal strictness of her 
vow and the rigor of conventual rule ; and so she was 
doing the best she could, by living the life of a nun, 
with as much exactness as circumstances would allow, 
in the garret of the warehouse, in which Benjamin now 
had his lodgings. 

There had this aged and simple-minded woman dwelt, 



A NUN, BUT NO NUNNERY. 99 

and thus had she lived, for a long series of years, free 
of rent-charge, through the kindness of many succes- 
sive occupants of the building, all of whom had been 
professors of the same faith v^ith herself, and who had 
all deemed it a blessing to have this pious and holy her- 
mitess under their roof. At an early day, long prior to 
the time now spoken of, she had conveyed the whole of 
her estate, which seems to have been considerable, to 
trustees, in trust for charitable uses, reserving only 
twelve pounds a year, from its proceeds, for her own 
support; and even of this small sum, she annually dis- 
pensed a part in alms, living herself on water-gruel 
alone, and that too of the most meager kind, using no 
fire except to make her gruel. 

A priest visited her daily, to receive her confession ; 
and being asked one day by the landlady, how she, in 
her long-practised abstinence, could need such frequent 
confession, the ancient nun replied — "Oh! it is impos- 
sible to avoid vain thoughts." 

When it is considered that the " thoughts," which a 
woman of so harmless and abstemious a life, and of 
such venerable age, had been so long accustomed to 
deem "vain," and yet found it '^impossible to avoid^'^ 
were doubtless the suggestions of her natural and long- 
repressed affections, avenging themselves upon her, for 
her mistaken faith and practice, then the foregoing re- 
ply, brief and simple as it is, comes to the mind with a 
melancholy significance. Her " way of life had fallen 
into the sear and yellow leaf," but yet, at seventy years 
as at twenty, she was still sitting alone in a secluded 
chamber — 

"While that which should accompany old age, 
As houor, love, obedience, troops of friends," — 

the blessing and glory of the hoary head, and what the 
aged heart craves and yearns for, she " could not look 



100 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

to have." There can nd^asily be found a sadder Bpec- 
tacle. 

Benjamin once obtained permission to visit her. " She 
was," says he, ** cheerful and polite, and conversed pleas- 
antly. The room was clean, but had no other furniture 
than a mattress, a table with a crucifix and a book, a 
stool which she gave me to sit on, and a picture over 
the chimney, of St. Veronica, displaying her handker- 
chief with the miraculous figure of Christ's bleeding 
face on it, which she explained to me with great seri- 
ousness. She looked pale, but was never sick ; and I 
give it as another instance on how small an income life 
and health may be supported." 

A course of life which makes so trifling a demand up- 
on either the corporeal, or mental powers, as hers did, 
does certainly need but little sustenance ; for the legiti- 
mate requirement of nature for food, is proportioned to 
the daily expenditure of strength, by the employment 
of mind, or body, or both. 

Among the acquaintances which Benjamin formed, 
while working for Watts, was " an ingenious young 
man" by the name of Wygate, who, "having wealthy 
relatives, had been better educated than most printers ; 
was a tolerable Latinist, spoke French, and loved read- 
ing." He and a friend of his were taught by Benjamin 
to swim, on going but twice into the Thames ; after 
which they shortly made themselves good swimmers. 
They introduced their teacher to some of their acquaint- 
ances just come to London, with whom the three made 
a party to go by water by Chelsea, to see the college 
and the curiosities there. 

Wygate had said so much to his friends, of Benja- 
min's remarkable expertness in the water, that they had 
a strong desire to see something of it; and on their re- 
turn, at the request of the company, he stripped, and 



swimmJng. 101 

plunging into the river, swam the distance from near 
Chelsea to Blackfriars, performing on the way " many 
feats of activity both upon and under the water, which 
surpiised and pleased those to whom they were novel- 
ties." He had, "from a child," as he relates, ''been 
delighted with this exercise ; had studied and practised 
Thevenot's motions and positions, and added some of 
his own, aiming at the graceful and easy, as well as the 
useful;" all of which he performed, on the occasion 
mentioned, deriving much gratification from the admira- 
tion he excited. 

Wygate, who had become filled with a strong desire 
to make himself a master of the art, growing more and 
more warmly attached to Benjamin on that account, as 
well as from the similarity of their studies and tastes in 
other respects, at length proposed that they two should 
travel together all over Europe, paying their way with 
what they could earn at different towns, by working at 
their trade. This would have been literally i-estoring 
the original usage of journeymen tradesmen, with whom 
it was common to travel, for the purpose of accomplish- 
ing themselves more thoroughly in their craft. The pro- 
posal made a strong impression upon Benjamin's mind, 
and he was at first inclined to adopt it. Upon talking 
of it, however, with the excellent Mr. Denham, with 
whom Benjamin, much to the credit of his good sense 
and right feeling, frequently spent a portion of his lei- 
sure, that judicious and faithful friend dissuaded him 
from the project, and wisely urged him to think only of 
going back to Philadelphia with him, as he now intend- 
ed soon to do. 

Mr. Denham, it has been already intimated, was a 
member of the Society of Friends, commonly called 
Quakers ; and Franklin gives, in this connection, a speci- 
men of his practice so honorable to his principles, but 

9* 



102 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

SO comparatively rare, j^Lably, in those days, as well 
as at the present time, though still so worthy of imita- 
tion, that the account is too interesting and valuable 
both as an anecdote and an example, to be omitted. 

"I must," says Franklin, "record one trait of this 
good man's character. He had formerly been in busi- 
ness at Bristol, but failed, in debt to a number of peo- 
ple, compounded, and went to America. There, by 
close application to business as a merchant, he acquired 
a plentiful fortune in a few years. Returning to Eng- 
land in the ship with me, he invited his old creditors to 
an entertainment, at which he thanked them for the easy 
composition they had favored him with, and, when they 
expected nothing but the treat, every man, at the first 
remove, found under his plate an order on a banker, for 
the full amount of the unpaid remainder, with interest." 

If all men in trade were thus truly honest and just, 
there would be less complaint of the hardness of credi- 
tors, and little need of bankrupt-acts. 

Mr. Denham, having transacted the business which 
had brought him to England, now informed Benjamin 
that he should soon sail for Philadelphia, with a large 
stock of merchandise, with which he intended to estab- 
lish himself in that city as a merchant. He had, more- 
over, formed a most favorable estimate of his young 
friend's capacity as well as the native qualities of his 
disposition ; and taking a sincere interest in his welfare, 
for which he could not help feeling a lively concern, if 
left, without any experienced and faithful adviser, to en- 
counter alone the hazards and perils of London, he pro- 
posed to Benjamin to take hirn as a clerk. The intel- 
ligent and worthy merchant told him that he could soon 
teach him the manner of keeping a merchant's ac- 
counts ; that in doing this, and in copying business let- 
ters, in attending upon customers for the sale of goods, 



THE PRINTER TURNS MERCHANT, 103 

and in the other daily-recurring details of mercantile 
affairs, he could speedily make himself acquainted with 
the current prices of produce, merchandise, and other 
kinds of property, together with the general course and 
management of trade ; that when he should have be- 
come sufficiently familiar with these matters, he would 
send him out to the West Indies, with a cargo of pro- 
visions and bread-stuffs, and procure profitable commis- 
sions for him, from other merchants ; and if he should 
give his best energies to the business, and acquit him- 
self according to his capacity, which only needed some 
practical development to make him a good merchant, 
he would *' establish him handsomely." 

This plan pleased Benjamin. He was becoming 
weary of London ; his recollections of Philadelphia 
were reviving many pleasing images in his mind, with 
a vividness and force, which were already urging him 
to return thither ; and he promptly agreed to the pro- 
posal. For his services as clerk he was to receive a 
yearly stipend of fifty pounds, in Pennsylvania curren- 
cy. This was less than he was then earning as a jour- 
neyman-printer ; but he looked mainly at the results of 
the plan, and the prospects were very inviting. 

" I now," says he, " took leave of printing, as I 
thought, forever ; and was daily employed in my new 
business, going about with Mr. Denham among the 
tradesmen, to purchase various articles and see them 
packed, delivering messages, and calling upon workmen 
to despatch." These things being done, and the j^ack- 
ages being all duly put on ship-board, he still had a few 
days of leisure before sailing. 

While thus waiting to take his departure, Benjamin 
was surprised by a message from Sir William Wynd- 
ham, whom he had never seen and knew only by reputa- 
tion, but who was one of the most accomplished gentle- 



104 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

men, as well as one ofllRie most distinguished states- 
men, of that period, and who wished to see him. Upon 
waiting on him, Benjamin found that Sir William, hav- 
ing heard of his feats in swimming, and of his skill in 
teaching others to swim, and having tw^o sons about to 
set forth upon their travels, wished to engage him to 
make them good swimmers before they went, and 
would pay liberally for such a service. 

The young men, however, had not yet come to town, 
and Benjamin's remaining time in London, was now too 
contingent to allow him to undertake the proposed task. 
The application, nevertheless, induced him to think that, 
if he could have stayed and opened a swimming-school, 
it would have paid well ; and that he should probably 
have remained and tried the experiment, if the applica- 
tion had been made before he became engaged with 
Mr. Denham. 

In his own narrative of his life, Franklin closes the 
account of his residence in London, at this period, with 
the following paragraph, which will also form an ap- 
propriate close to this chapter : — 

*' Thus had I passed about eighteen months in Lon- 
don. Most part of the time I worked hard at my busi- 
ness, and spent but little upon myself except in seeing 
plays, and in books. My friend Ralph had kept me 
poor. He owed me about twenty-seven pounds, which 
I was now never likely to receive : a great sum out of 
my small earnings. I loved him, notwithstanding, for 
he had many amiable qualities. I had improved my 
knowledge, however, though I had by no means im- 
proved my fortune ; but I had made some very inge- 
nious acquaintances, whose conversation was of great 
advantage to me ; and I had read considerably." 



EMBARKS FOR AMERICA. 105 



CHAPTER XI. 

LEAVES ENGLAND VOYAGE HOME NEW CONNECTIONS. 

On Thursday, the 21st of July, 1726, in the afternoon, 
Benjamin and his friend Denham went on board the 
good ship Berhshire, Henry Clark, master, bound for 
Philadelphia. As appears, however, by the journal, 
which Benjamin kept of this voyage, it was many days 
longer before they were able to leave the English waters 
and get fairly out to sea. Some of the incidents which 
occurred during this delay on the coast of England, and 
on the homeward passage, though not incorporated in 
Franklin's own biographical narrative, are, neverthe- 
less, by no means without interest ; and as they not only 
belong to his life as truly as if they had occurred at 
a fixed residence on land, but served, also, to enlarge 
his experience and his stock of ideas, some of the more 
entertaining and instructive among them are here 
briefly related. 

They lingered in the Thames two days, and did not 
pass the Downs and enter the straits of Dover till the 
24th of July. As they sailed along that narrow sea, at 
an easy rate, before a fresh breeze and under a clear 
blue sky, Benjamin, sitting on the quarter-deck of the 
Berkshire and noting what he saw, in his diary, was fa- 
vored with one of the fairest and most exhilarating 



106 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

scenes the eye can rest^m* A large number of ships, 
with all their canvass spread and trimmed to every va- 
riety of course, were moving before him in all directions 
over the gleaming waters ; the coast of France was 
looming far in the distance, to the left ; while nearer, 
on the right, and in distinct view, were seen the town 
of Dover with the massive towers and battlements of its 
huge old castle looking down upon it in protecting 
strength, and the chalky cliffs and green hills of the 
English shore — all in seeming motion and receding in 
a sort of countermarch, as he went by. 

The next morning, however, the wind failed, and a 
short calm was followed by very variable weather, till the 
27th, when so heavy a gale came from the west, right 
in their teeth, that they ran for a harbor; and coming 
to anchor at Spithead, off Portsmouth, Benjamin took 
the opportunity to visit that ancient town, one of the 
principal naval stations of England, and famous for its 
vast ship-yards. The entrance to Portsmouth is stated 
to be so narrow, with such bold shores, that the forts 
which guard it, one on each side, are but a stone's throw 
apart; while the haven within has ample space to 
moor the whole British navy. He found the place 
strongly fortified, surrounded by a high wall, with a 
spacious moat crossed by two draw-bridges fronting, 
respectively, the two gates of the town, which depended, 
then as now, for the support of its population, mainly 
on its ship-yards and the trade connected with them. 

One of the most remarkable objects pointed out to 
Benjamin, during his brief visit to Portsmouth, was a dun- 
geon, called " Johnny Gibson's Hole," under the town- 
wall near one of the gates, where John Gibson, gover- 
nor of the place in Queen Anne's reign, and a heart- 
less tyrant, made it a practice to shut in and starve the 
soldiers of the garrison, for the most trifling irregulari- 



LOVE OF WAR — ITS FRUITS. 107 

ties. On this cruel and needless severity, Benjamin 
makes a comment which is here copied, not only for its 
pertinency and justness, but as an indication, also, of 
the range of his reading and his habits of reflection, at 
that early period. Admitting the importance of good 
discipline, he adds the remark, that — "Alexander and 
Caesar, those renowned generals, received more faith- 
ful service, and performed greater actions, by means of 
the love their soldiers bore them, than they could pos- 
sibly have done, if, instead of being beloved and re- 
spected, they had been hated and feared, by those they 
commanded." 

After all, however, the general condition of the rank 
and file of armies, has been, on the whole, but little re- 
lieved by such occasional examples of clemency and 
care on the part of a few great leaders ; and the prac- 
tice of ** Johnny Gibson," there is but too much reason 
to believe, may, in its spirit and essence, be deemed 
more in accord with actual exj^erience, or a truer speci- 
men of those fruits, which, among nations particularly 
covetous of martial fame, war, with its manifold con- 
comitants — its costly establishments — the life of its 
camps and garrisons, and the despotic power and sum- 
mary procedure by which alone can that life be regu- 
lated — has usually yielded to the common soldiery and 
the mass of the people. Its pomps and splendors — 
its gains and glories — have been mostly for the great 
ones — for the high-born, privileged, or lucky Jew; 
while its deadliest perils and most exhausting labors — 
its foot-blistering marches and weary night-watches — 
the pestilence of its camps and the bloody havoc of its 
battle-fields — its nakedness and famine — its dungeons 
and prison-ships — its desolated hearths, its peeled and 
scattered families, its heavy taxes, hard toil, maimed 
limbs, vagrant beggary, and its thousand nameless woes, 



108 LIFE OF KENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

have been the harvest ^ihe humble, unprivileged, un- 
friended many. 

Leaving Portsmouth on the 28th of July and pro- 
ceeding along the straits, w^hich separate the Isle of 
Wight from the shore of England, they visited Cowes, 
Newport, and Yarmouth, the three principal towns of 
the Isle, and at one or other of which the BerhsJiirc 
was detained by head winds for nearly a fortnight. 
Though becoming impatient to be once more in Phil- 
adelphia, this delay was by no means lost time to Ben- 
jamin; for he took the opportunity to gratify his curi- 
osity by seeing, as fully as circumstances allowed, what 
that side of the island contained. 

Cowes, a port often visited now-a-days by the mer- 
chant-vessels of the United States, is built on both 
sides of a small estuary, which sends a narrow inlet 
about four miles inland, along a pleasant vale at the 
head of which stands Newport, the residence of the 
governor of the island, and an inviting little town, 
embellished and refreshed by an unusual abundance 
of fine trees and shrubbery. But Newport is rep- 
resented as being chiefly remarkable for its trade in 
oysters, reputed to be superior to any others found on 
the British coasts. It appears, however, that these oys- 
ters are not natives of the place but are procured else- 
where, and, to fatten and prepare them for market, they 
are planted in regular beds in the Newport waters, 
which contain, doubtless, some ingredient particularly 
acceptable to the oysters for food, and imparting to 
them their fine relish. ^ A case bearing a strong analogy 
to this, is that of the famous canvass-back ducks, which 
frequent the lower reaches of the Susquehannah river 
and the head-waters of the Chesapeake bay, and derive 
their peculiarly fine and delicate flavor from the wild 



CARISBROOK CASTLE. 109 

celery, which abounds in their favorite haunts, and 
on which they chiefly feed. 

But Benjamin's most interesting excursion, during 
his stay on this island, was his visit to the village and 
castle of Carisbrook, about a mile back of Newport. 
Except the ruins of a fine old Gothic church, the mother- 
church of the whole isle, and in the palmy days of pa- 
pal supremacy, connected with a priory, the village con- 
tained little to attract a tourist ; and passing the small 
brook, which skirts it and gives name to the whole lo- 
cality, he made his way, with a boy for his guide, up a 
steep hill, on the sides and summit of which stood the 
dilapidated walls and towers of Carisbrook castle, once 
an extensive and strong fortress, but in 1726 little bet- 
ter than a mass of ivy-mantled ruins. 

The outer wall and fosse of the castle encircled the 
hill so near its base as to enclose a very large area, in 
the lower portion of which and contiguous to the wall, 
had been erected those parts of the vast structure de- 
signed for household and other ordinary civic uses ; 
while high above, on the crest of the commanding 
height, stood the massive and round towers of the keep, 
the strongest and most ancient part of the fortress, the 
ascent to which was by a steep and narrow stair-way of 
a hundred stone steps. 

Within this citadel was the famous well, said to have 
been, when dug, the deepest in the world. To assist him 
in forming some judgment of its depth, Benjamin drop- 
ped a stone into it, and though gi'eat quantities of rubbish 
had accumulated above its original bottom, yet he found 
it to be about fifteen seconds before the stone was heard 
to strike. A more accurate estimate of its depth, how- 
ever, could be formed, probably, by comparing it with 
the well then actually in use, in the lower part of the 
castle. That well was known to be thirty fathoms deep ; 

10 



110 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

and as the water in both^e wells was doubtless supplied 
from the same source and at the same level, the height 
of the upper well's mouth above that of the lower one, 
being added to the thirty fathoms mentioned, would give 
the true original depth of the upper well, and make it 
about three hundred feet. From this lower well the 
people in and about the castle obtained their daily sup- 
plies of water, which they raised by means of a very 
large wheel and axle with a barrel for a bucket. ** It 
makes," says the journal, " a great sound, if you speak 
in it, and it echoed the flute which we played over it, 
very sweetly." 

The old man, who acted as nominal keeper of the 
place, but whose chief occupation was selling cake and 
beer at the castle-gate, told Benjamin that the castle was 
originally founded in the year 523, by one Whitgert, a 
Saxon chief, who had conquered the island, and from 
whom it bore, for many ages, the name of Whitgerts- 
burg. Indeed, in its present name there is a trace of 
its Saxon conqueror. 

This castle w^s extensively repaired, strengthened, 
and embellished by Q,ueen Elizabeth, in 1598; in testi- 
mony whereof, Benjamin found on the walls, in several 
places, the following brief inscription : — ** 1598, E. R. 
40:" — meaning, doubtless, that in the year 1598, the 
40th of her reign, Elizabeth, Regina (queen), caused 
these repairs to be made. 

Since the middle of the 17th century, Carisbrook cas- 
tle has been remembered in history, chiefly from its con- 
nection with the fortunes of Charles I., king of Eng- 
land. In the latter part of 1647, that misguided mon- 
arch, in a sudden but characteristic freak of mind, filled 
out the measure of his wayward career, by voluntarily 
placing himself in the custody of Colonel Hammond, a 
generous and humane man, but belonging, as was well 



ISLE OP WIGHT. Ill 

known, to the party led by Charles's most powerful an- 
tagonist, Oliver Cromwell, the ablest of that age ; in 
which custody, kindly treated, but strictly guarded, the 
unthroned king remained till about the end of 1648, 
when he was removed, for a brief space, first to Hurst- 
castle in Hampshire, and thence to London, to trial, 
sentence, a scaffold, and the axe, in January, 1649, as a 
traitor to his country. 

The castle-towers, on the crest of the hill, afforded 
a wide and beautiful prospect, including most of the 
island, which is about sixty miles in circuit, and is rep- 
resented as being occupied by a sound and able-bodied 
population, with its soil even then well cultivated, and 
producing, says Benjamin's journal, ''plenty of wheat 
and other provisions, and wool as fine as Cotswold." 

The wool-growers of the present day, who clip their 
fleeces from the purest merinos and saxonies, may 
smile to see the wool of Cotswold offered as a standard. 
That standard has doubtless risen since 1726, among 
the farmers of the Isle of Wight, as well as elsewhere ; 
and the same region has witnessed other changes of yet 
graver moment; for while the once massive walls of 
Carisbrook castle have become heaps of rubbish, testi- 
fying that the age of lawless power and rapine they 
originally betokened, has passed away, the fields of the 
Isle of Wight have been improving, with the increasing 
stability of private rights and social order, till they now 
constitute one of the most productive and beautiful dis- 
tricts in the whole realm of England. 

Before leaving the island, the Berkshire touched at 
Yarmouth. The most striking object Benjamin no- 
ticed at this place, was a finely-executed marble statue, 
in armor, on the tomb of Sir Robert Holmes, a former 
governor of the island. This statue was said to have 
been executed in Italy for Louis XIV. of France, and 



112 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

intended for one of th^ornaments of his magnificent 
palace at Versailles ; but the vessel, which was taking 
it to France, being wrecked on the island in the time 
of Sir Robert, he got possession of the statue and di- 
rected that after his death it should be placed on his 
own tomb. 

At length, on the 9th of August, the wind came fair, 
and taking leave of England, mainland and island, the 
Berkshire stood away for America. The voyage was 
not marked by any events of magnitude ; but a few of 
its incidents, having something of instruction or enter- 
tainment, are here noticed. 

On the 21st of August, in the afternoon, when about 
six hundred miles from land, a small bird, blown off to 
sea during some recent thick weather, lighted, or rather 
fell on deck ; but was too much exhausted even to take 
nourishment, and died in a few hours, though tenderly 
treated. The occurrence, not without interest in itself, 
is remarkable chiefly for the great distance from land 
when it happened. 

An entry of more value for the information it con- 
veys to the general reader, is made in the journal under 
date of September 2d, relative to the dolphin. It is 
not commonly known among landsmen that this fish is 
eaten ; but two dolphins being caught in the morning 
of the day named, they were fried for dinner, and 
** tasted tolerably well." Among mere landsmen, more- 
over, the prevalent notion of the appearance and char- 
acter of this fish, is probably that which has been re- 
ceived from the poets and artists, who have given it a 
form wholly unlike its real one, and who have a fanci- 
ful tradition that, in the dying moments of the dolphin, 
a succession of quick-shifting brilliant colors play over 
its body as life is ebbing away. 

These notions are mere fancies, the dolphin being 



THE DOLPHIN, AND THE SHARK. 113 

" as beautiful and well-shaped a fish as any that swims ;" 
making "a glorious appearance in the ivater,'" the body 
being "of a bright green mixed with a silver tint, and 
the tail of a shining golden yellow." On being taken 
out of the water, however, these splendid dyes all van- 
ish together, giving place to a uniform pale gray, the 
usual hue of death. One of the most successful baits 
for the dolphin is a candle with a feather fixed in each 
side, to imitate the appearance of its frequent food, the 
flying fish ; and three large dolphins thus caught one 
day, made a sufficient dinner for the whole ship's com- 
pany, twenty-one in number. 

On Wednesday, the 14th of September, in the after- 
noon, occurred one of the most sublime and awe-giving 
spectacles the material universe can present to human 
eyes — an eclipse of the sun nearly total, full ten twelfths 
of its disk being covered by the intervening moon. 

With the wind almost unvaryingly ahead, the conse- 
quent slow progress, and an ill-assorted dull company, 
the passage was now becoming exceedingly wearisome; 
and the supply of bread was getting so low that on the 
20th of September, they were all put upon a specific 
allowance of two and a half biscuits a day. They had 
run so far south, too, that the weather was uncomforta- 
bly hot ; and on the day after the allowance was order- 
ed, the ship idly rocking in the calm and the heat being 
very oppressive, Benjamin was about to refresh both his 
body and his spirits by a cooling bath in the sea, when 
a shark, "■ that mortal enemy to swimmers," was fortu- 
nately discovered in season to prevent what would, other- 
wise, have proved probably his last bath. 

The habits of the shark are interesting. This one is 
represented as ** moving round the ship at some dis- 
tance, in a slow majestic manner," waited on by his 
usual retinue of little pilot-fishes, the largest of them 



114 LIFE OP BENJAMIxV FRANKLIN. 

being less tlian the sm0tev rnackerel, and the smallest, 
not much larger than minnows. Of "these diminutive 
pilots two kept just before the shark's nose," seeming 
really to control his movements ; while the rest of the 
train swam about him, without any special duty to per- 
form, unless it was, according to the common belief of 
sailors, to act as his purveyors of food ; receiving from 
him, in return for such service, protection from one of 
their most destructive enemies, the swift and voracious 
dolphin. A strong well-baited hook was thrown out for 
the sea-robber ; but he had, probably, dulled the fierce 
edge of his formidable appetite, with some recent vic- 
tim, and declined the invitation to a lunch so soon after. 

Two days afterward they spoke a ship from Dublin, 
bound for New York, carrying out about fifty emigrants 
to their Land of Promise. The two vessels approached 
each other within easy hail, and all on board of each 
presented themselves, to enjoy a look at other human 
faces thus casually encountered in the midst of the lone- 
ly waste of waters. The feeling that springs fi'om mere 
identity of race — the sympathy of a common nature — 
is probably felt nowhere so strongly as out on the wide 
ocean, under precisely the circumstances here men- 
tioned ; and the exhilarating influence of such a meeting 
is so well described in the journal before us, that we 
transcribe the passage : it will recall to many a beauti- 
ful parallel passage in Irving's " Sketch Book:" — 

" There was really," says the journal, ** something 
strangely cheering to the spirits, in the meeting of a 
ship at sea, containing a society of creatures of the same 
species and in the same circumstances with ourselves, 
after we had been long separated from the rest of man- 
kind. My heart fluttered in my breast with joy, when 
[ saw so many human countenances, and I could scarce 
refrain from that kind of laughter which proceeds from 



TORNADO AT SEA. 115 

inward pleasure. When we have been for a considera- 
ble time tossing on the vast waters, far from the sight 
of land or ships, or any mortal creature but ourselves, 
except a few fish and sea-birds^ the whole world, for 
aught we know, may be under a second deluge, and we, 
like Noah and his companions in the Ark, the only sur- 
viving remnant of the human race." 

For the following day or two the wind became more 
favorable, and sent them along at a rate, which so raised 
their spirits that they began to talk of Philadelphia and 
think of the friends they should soon meet ; when, early 
in the morning of September 26th, they suddenly found 
themselves, without any previous warning, in the very 
vortex of a violent tornado, which wheeled in so short 
a curve, that the forward sails were filled on one side, 
and the sails aft on the other ; and the rain and the gale 
were both so violent that " the sea looked like a dish 
of cream." Luckily, however, the tornado soon passed 
off on its whirling track, and was succeeded, to the joy 
of all, by a fresh northeaster, which sped the Berkshire 
cheerily on her course. 

In a day or two, however, the wind veered again to 
the west and north of west, from which quarter it had, 
indeed, come during most of their run thus far. But 
though they had thus been compelled, in order to make 
any headway, to take a very southerly course, and were 
making their track a very long one, yet on the 28th 
they entered the gulf-stream, which was indicated by 
the sea-weed, which is spread over the Atlantic from 
near the American coast to the Azores, by that great 
oceanic river. 

On fishing up and examining some of this weed, his 
curiosity was much excited by finding numerous speci- 
mens of a small shell-fish adhering to its branches. 
The smallest of them contained what seemed to the 



116 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

naked eye merely a s(^ unorganized pulp; but the 
larger ones plainly manifested animal life, by opening 
and shutting their shells, and thrusting forth claws re- 
sembling the crab's, bat not yet fully formed. On look- 
ing more closely among the branches, he discovered a 
very small crab, not so large as his finger-nail, detached 
from the weed. This naturally suggested the inference 
that the little shells still adhering to the weed, contained 
the embryos of other animals of the same species ; and 
the better to test this inference, he put a branch, with 
many adhering shells upon it, into a cask of sea-water, 
intending to renew the water from time to time, and 
watch the result. The very next day he found in the 
cask another young crab, so small that it seemed just 
separated from its native branch. But the weed in the 
cask was now wilted, and the other embryos dead, so 
that his experiment was cut short. 

The facts he had already observed, however, satisfied 
him that his inference was correct. He now recollected 
also, that during a recent calm, he had seen a crab swim- 
ming among the floating weeds, on which it was then 
supposed to be feeding; and other circumstances re- 
lating to this same species of shell-fish, now recurred 
to his mind and served to corroborate his views. 

These circumstances are related as serving to present 
the mental habits and tendencies of the subject of our 
narrative, in an interesting light, and as exemplifying 
that spirit of observation which, as it became more de- 
veloped by exercise, led him to those philosophical 
investigations for which he ultimately became so pre- 
eminently distinguished. 

A day or two after the incidents just related, another 
interesting phenomenon occurred, in the heavens. This 
was an eclipse of the moon. According to the calcula- 
tion of this eclipse for the meridian of London, it was 



ECLIPSE OF MOON FLYING-PISH. 



117 



to commence at 5, A. M., of September 30th ; but at 
the longitude of the Berkshire it began at about 11, 
P. M., of the 29th, and continued nearly three hours. 
At the moment of greatest obscuration, which was 
about half an hour after midnight, six digits, or one half 
of the moon's disk, was covered by the shadow of the 

earth. 

On the morning of October 4th, a flying-fish was 
found dead on deck, where it had probably alighted 
from its flight to escape its most persecuting enemy, the 
dolphin. Its wings are described as being of a fin-like 
structure, and extending from a little back of the gills 
nearly to the tail. Its flight is straight-forward, com- 
monly from six to ten feet above the water, and some- 
times reaching forty or fifty yards, or as long as the 
wings continue wet enough to hold the air. When hard 
pressed by the dolphin, they rise, usually in little flocks 
of four or five, and sometimes more ; but their swift 
pursuer, aware of their straight flight, holds right on, 
and is generally at the spot ready to seize them when 
they again touch the water. 

On the evening of the same day the Berkshire's com- 
pany were cheered by tokens of nearing land. These 
tokens had, in truth, begun to excite more than ordinary 
interest, for ''the ship's crew was now brought to a 
short allowance of water." Happily, on the 7th of 
October, the wind, so long contrary, came fresh and 
strong from the northeast, sending the ship steadily on 
her course, full seven knots an hour; and holding at the 
same point for the two following days, they sped on- 
ward, amid multiplying signs that they were at length 
rapidly approaching the American coast, till, on Sunday, 
the 9th of October, a little past noon, a man on the look- 
out aloft, to the great joy of all in the ship, gave - the 
long-wished-for cry of land." Sixty full days had now 



118 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

elapsed since Benjamin^ppid taken his last look at the 
shores of England ; and when, about an hour later, the 
coast of his native land became visible from the Berk- 
shire's deck, it was for a time somewhat dimmed to the 
moist eyes with which he gazed upon it. 

Captain Clark, however, being wholly unacquainted 
with the coast, and no pilot appearing, the Berkshire 
did not enter the Delaware till the next day ; and the 
evening of still another day came round, before Benja- 
min actually set foot again in Philadelphia, when his 
journal is closed with a warm expression of gladness, 
and a hearty ** thank Grod," on the safe completion of 
** so tedious and dangerous a voyage." 

But far the most important subject that occupied 
Benjamin's mind, on this long passage, remains to be 
noticed in closing this chapter. That subject was the 
regulation of his future career — the methodizing of his 
life upon some comprehensive system, including not 
merely the occupation by which he was to gain his live- 
lihood, but other fixed and definite objects, for the attain- 
ment of which his faculties should be exerted, so that 
neither ability nor opportunity should be wasted in in- 
decision, or in unproductive because aimless effort. 

To aid him in accomplishing a purpose of such grave 
concern, he availed himself of his leisure at sea to di- 
gest such a plan and reduce it to writing. In his own 
account of his life, long years after, he refers to that 
plan as making part of his journal ; but it is not there. 
It was probably lost, with a great many other of his pa- 
pers, during his long-protracted absence from home and 
country in the public service ; so that no judgment can 
now be formed of it, except by way of inference from 
other portions of his writings on similar topics, and 
from the actual course of his life. Such an inference is 
the more to be relied on in this case, for an idea of the 



END OF VOYAGE. 119 

general tenor of the plan in question, for the reason that, 
on adverting to it, as stated, he speaks of it with a just 
satisfaction, as being the more w^orthy of mention be- 
cause, though formed at so early an age, he had, never- 
theless, " pretty faithfully adhered to it, quite through 
to old age." 



120 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



CHAPTER XII. 

CHANGES IN PHILADELPHIA DEATH OF MR. DENHAM 

SENDS BENJAMIN TO HIS TRADE AGAIN. 

On returning to Philadelphia, and looking about 
among his former acquaintances to reconnect the social 
ties which had been temporarily severed, Benjamin 
found that an absence of less than even two years had 
made room for various changes. During that absence, 
Sir William Keith, the governor of the province when 
Benjamin sailed for England, had been removed, and 
Major Patrick Gordon appointed in his place. Keith, 
however, still remained in Philadelphia; and when he 
again saw in its streets the young man he had so un- 
worthily deceived, manifested some consciousness of 
shame for his conduct, by shrinking away from any 
meeting with him. 

But a change of more interest to Benjamin was the 
marriage of Miss Read. After the arrival of the letter, 
which, as heretofore mentioned, he wrote to her from 
London, her friends insisted that there was no proba- 
bility he would ever return, and persuaded her to marry 
a man by the name of Rogers. He was a potter by 
trade, and is represented as being a very skilful work- 
man. His prospects in business being considered highly 
promising, the friends of Miss Read urged the match, 
without making, as it seems, any sufficient inquiry into 
his personal character or private connections. The 



OLD ACQUAINTANCES. 121 

marriage was an ill-judged and unhappy one ; and from 
the circumstances attending it, as briefly alluded to by 
Franklin, it seems nearly certain that the young lady 
herself assented to it very reluctantly. It was soon fol- 
lowed by her refusal to live with her husband, or to be 
called by his name ; and a report becoming prevalent 
that he actually had another wife living, she wholly re- 
nounced the connection. Rogers, in fact, proved to be 
unprincipled and worthless ; and a year or two later, 
having involved himself deeply in debt, he absconded to 
the West Indies, where he died ; thus relieving his no- 
minal wife and her friends from all further embarrass- 
ment or annoyance through him. 

Of the other persons already introduced into this nar- 
rative on account of their connection with Benjamin, 
the only one remaining to be noticed in this place, was 
the eccentric Keimer. His condition appeared to have 
become considerably improved. He had obtained posses- 
sion of a much better house, in which he had opened a 
shop, with a good assortment of stationery; hisprinting- 
ofiice was well supplied with types and other furniture ; 
and he had several workmen in his employ, with appa- 
rently work enough to keep them busy. 

Benjamin, however, had returned, it will be recol- 
lected, not as a journeyman printer, but as a merchant's 
clerk. His principal and friend, Mr. Denham, lost no 
time in opening his store of goods ; and his clerk, giving 
diligent and earnest attention to his new business, soon 
made himself a correct and ready accountant, as well 
as an adroit and acceptable salesman. They both lived 
under the same roof, more like father and son than as 
master and servant ; the excellent and intelligent Qua- 
ker merchant taking a sincere paternal interest in the 
welfare of his young friend and assistant, and the latter 

11 



122 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

cherishing for his patrTO and employer a truly filial re- 
spect and affection. 

A letter of Benjamin's, dated on the 6th of January, 
O. S., 1727 — the 21st anniversary of his birthday — to 
Jane, his youngest sister, and the last child of her pa- 
rents, presents such pleasing proof of the kindliness of 
his nature, and, besides the justness of its sentiments, 
gives so early an indication of the prevalent bent of his 
mind in favor of what is useful rather than showy, that 
the insertion of it here seems to be demanded, not 
merely for the reasons mentioned, but as being in a man- 
ner necessary to the just estimate of his character. To 
give the letter its full significance, moreover, it should 
be observed that Jane Franklin was now fast verging to 
the end of her 15th year, which was completed in the 
following March, and that her brother had recently 
heard of her intended marriage with Edward Mecom, 
which actually took place in the succeeding July, the 
fourth month of her 16th year. The interest of this 
letter is somewhat enhanced, also, by the fact that, ex- 
cepting only the brief note to Sir Hans Sloane, relative 
to the asbestos purse, this is the earliest piece of writing 
from the same pen, now in print. The letter is as fol- 
lows : — 

*' Dear Sister : I am highly pleased with the ac- 
count Captain Freeman gives me of you. I always 
judged by your behavior when a child, that you would 
make a good and agreeable woman ; and you know you 
were ever my peculiar favorite. I have been thinking 
what would be a suitable present for me to make, and 
for you to receive, as I hear you are grown a celebrated 
beauty. I had almost determined on a tea-table ; but 
when I considered, that the character of a good house- 
wife was far preferable to that of being only a pretty 
gentlewoman, I concluded to send you a spinning -wheels 



MR. DENHAM DIES. 123 

which I hope you will accept as a small token of my 
sincere love and affection. 

" Sister, farewell ; and remember that modesty, as it 
makes the most homely virgin amiable and charming, 
so the want of it infallibly renders the most perfect 
beauty disagreeable and odious. But when that bright- 
est of female virtues shines, among other perfections of 
body and mind, in the same person, it makes the woman 
more lovely than an angel. Excuse this freedom, and 
use the same with me. I am, dear Jenny, your loving 
Dr other, 

*'B. Franklin." 

The new mercantile life on which Benjamin had en- 
tered, was now opening pleasantly before him, with 
cheering prospects of success in business, and under the 
happiest personal relations between himself and his 
patron, when, early in February, 1727, they were both 
prostrated by sickness. Benjamin's disease was pleu- 
risy, and it came very near proving fatal. So severe did 
it become that he gave up any expectation of surviving 
it ; and his intense sufferings under the violent inflam- 
mation which marks the disease, produced such ex- 
haustion of spirit and weariness of life, that he felt, for 
the time, as he relates, some degree of disappointment 
and regret when he found himself recovering, and re- 
flected that, sooner or later, he must again undergo a 
similar trial. 

The disease which seized upon Mr. Denham is not 
named ; but after a protracted struggle the worthy man 
died under it, in the course of the spring. His stock of 
merchandise passed into the hands of his executors ; 
and Benjamin, with a small bequest from his friend as a 
memorial of goodwill, was again thrown upon his own 
resources. His brother-in-law. Captain Holmes, hap- 
pening, fortunately, to be in Philadelphia, advised him 



124 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

to betake himself again l^iis trade ; and Keimer offered 
him a liberal yearly stipend, if he would take charge of 
his printing-office, so that he might himself devote his 
own attention wholly to his business as a stationer and 
bookseller. But, besides a strong repugnance to another 
engagement with Keimer, Benjamin felt very reluctant 
to abandon his new line of business. After making an 
unsuccessful effort, however, to find a permanent situa- 
tion as a clerk in some mercantile house in Philadelphia, 
he accepted Keimer's offer. 

On taking his place in the printing-office as foreman, 
he found there five persons — Hugh Meredith, Stephen 
Potts, a young Irishman called John, George Webb, and 
David Harry — of whom he has left a notice substan- 
tially as follows. 

Meredith, a Pennsylvanian, bred a farmer, and now 
thirty years old, was an honest, sensible man, fond of 
reading, and too fond of strong drink. Potts, born and 
bred like Meredith, had just passed his minority, pos- 
sessed uncommon parts and a lively wit, but was rather 
idle. The object of the former of these two was to be- 
come a pressman, and of the latter, a bookbinder ; and 
for the sake of these objects they had engaged at unu- 
sually low wages, which were to be raised from time to 
time, as they should become more expert and useful. 
John, the only name by which the young Irishman is 
designated, bred to no regular business, was an emigi'ant 
whose services Keimer had purchased for a term of four 
years, and was to make him a good pressman. George 
Webb was a runaway student of Oxford university, in 
England, whose services Keimer had bought for four 
years also, and was to make him a compositor. David 
Harry, a country lad, was an indented apprentice. 

Such were the persons who constituted Keimer's force 
in the printing-office, and whom he had hired under an 



RETURNS TO HIS TRADE. 125 

express agreement to teach them several branches of 
business of which he knew little or nothing himself 

To the quick and observant mind of Benjamin, it soon 
became evident that Keimer's leading motive for offering 
him more than ordinary wages, was to obtain, in him, a 
person who could fulfil the agreement he was not com- 
petent himself to perform, by teaching his workmen the 
several parts of the printer's trade ; and that when this 
should be done, as Keimer had them all bound to him 
for a considerable period, he would then be able to carry 
on his business without Benjamin's further assistance. 
Nevertheless, though seeing all this, and the fraudulent 
spirit which had influenced Keimer, Benjamin went qui- 
etly forward, arranged the printing-oflice, which was in 
utter confusion, and not only introduced order and dis- 
cipline among the hands, but taught them how to exe- 
cute their work in a workmanlike manner. 

The case of George Webb was peculiar. That a 
young man of good parts, who had been a member of 
Oxford university, should be found, at so early an age, 
in a foreign land, and in the condition of that class of 
pauper immigi^ants, who, from selling their time and ser- 
vice for a term of years, to enable them to pay the ex- 
penses of immigration, are called redemptioners, was cer- 
tainly not a little singular ; and the further notice left 
of him by Franklin, contains a lesson sufficiently inter- 
esting and monitory to be somewhat more fully pre- 
sented. 

From his own account of himself to Franklin, it ap- 
pears that he was about eighteen years old, and was 
born at Gloucester, in England, where he was placed at 
a grammar-school to be fitted for the university. He 
was one of the wits of the school, wrote verses, and dis- 
tinguished himself among the boys as a player, in the 
dramatic pieces performed at the school exhibitions. 
11* 



126 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

On being sent to the u^lersity he remained there dis- 
contentedly for about a year, " wishing of all things to 
see London and becoine a player." Upon receiving his 
last quarterly allowance, therefore, instead of paying his 
bills at Oxford, he ran away to London ; but finding him- 
self unable to join the players, he fell into bad company, 
squandered his money, pawned his clothes to procure 
food, and while roaming the streets one day, a printed 
notice being handed to him, offering employment to all 
who would* go into service in America, he caught at the 
proposals, executed the necessary contract, was imme- 
diately shipped, and left England, without even a line to 
his friends to tell them whither he was going. ** He 
was," says Franklin, " lively, witty, good-natured, and 
a pleasant companion ; but idle, thoughtless, and impru- 
dent, to the last degree." 

Such being the character of this youth, it is easy to 
see that his whole career, and the result of it, in the sale 
of himself for four years to Keimer, were but the natu- 
ral and legitimate consequence of very Sufficient causes. 

The young Irishman, John, soon eloped and disap- 
peared ; but with the other hands Benjamin lived on very 
pleasant terms, inasmuch as they found Keimer incapa- 
ble of teaching them anything, while they were daily 
advancing in the knowledge of their business, under the 
instruction and supervision of Benjamin, whom they 
respected accordingly. He was, moreover, adding to 
the number of his agreeable and valuable acquaintances 
among the residents of the town; and as he did not 
work on Saturday, which was his employer's sabbath, 
he had two days in the week at his own disposal, which 
he devoted principally to reading. His services, also, 
at this period, were so very important to Keimer, that 
from him, too, he received unusual civility, accompanied 
by various manifestations of great seeming regard ; so 



KEIMER PICKS A QUARREL. 127 

that, as he relates, nothing now gave him any uneasiness, 
but his debt to Vernon, which he had been too inattentive 
to economy to be enabled yet to pay. His creditor, how- 
ever, had not yet asked for it. 

There was no type-foundry at that time in either of 
the colonies ; and as the printing-office became occasion- 
ally deficient in sorts, Benjamin had recourse to his own 
ingenuity to supply such wants. 

" I had seen type cast at St. James's, in London," says 
he, " but without much attention to the manner. How- 
ever, I contrived a mould, and made use of the letters 
we had as puncheons, struck the matrices in lead, and 
thus supplied in a jDretty tolerable way all deficiencies. 
I also engraved several things on occasion; made the 
ink; was warehouse-man, and, in short, quite d^ facto- 
tum.'^ 

Notwithstanding all this, however, and the exemplary 
good faith and success with which he had managed his 
department of Keimer's business, doing for him what he 
was wholly incompetent himself to do, that person be- 
gan in due time to betray his inherent knavery, and the 
real object for whicli Benjamin had been engaged. 
When a sufficient period had elapsed for the benefits of 
Benjamin's instruction and superintendence to manifest 
themselves, and the workmen in the office had come to 
understand their business so as to perform it in a credit- 
able manner, Keimer's deportment began to change ; and 
when he paid Benjamin his wages at the end of his sec- 
ond quarter, he gave him to understand that he found his 
pay burdensome, and thought he ought to consent to 
some abatement. " He grew by degrees less civil, put 
on more the airs of a master, frequently found fault, was 
captious, and seemed ready for an outbreak." 

Benjamin bore this change of treatment for a while, with 
a good degree of patience, and the more so, because he 



128 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

generously ascribed it, ii^art at least, to the irritable state 
of mind produced by the embarrassment of his affairs. 
A trifling occurrence, however, pretty soon put a sudden 
end to their connection. 

An unusual noise in the neighborhood, one day, in- 
duced Benjamin to put his head out of the window to 
see what occasioned it. Keimer, who was in the street, 
observing this, called out to him in a loud, imperious tone, 
and with reproachful language, to mind his business. 
This insuTt was rendered particularly galling, by the fact 
that it was witnessed by many of the neighbors, the same 
noise having drawn most of them to their doors and win- 
dows ; and as Keimer went immediately up into the of- 
fice, and there renewed his insolent abuse, Benjamin's 
patience and goodnature were exhausted, and he retorted 
upon him with great indignation. Keimer gave the stip- 
ulated quarter's notice for dissolving their contract, at 
the same time declaring his wish that it could be short- 
ened. Benjamin told him he could have his wish, for he 
should instantly quit him; and, taking his hat, forthwith 
left the printing-office, requesting Meredith, whom he met 
below, to. take care of such of his things as were in the 
office, and bring them to his lodgings. 

Meredith readily complied with the request, for he had 
become strongly attached to Benjamin; and when, in the 
evening, he went to the lodgings of the latter, they not 
only talked over the occurrences of the day and the con- 
dition of Keimer and his affiiirs, but held also, a long 
conversation upon their own situations and prospects. 
As that conversation led to important results, its general 
tenor is here stated. 

Meredith was extremely desirous that his instructor 
and friend should continue in Keimer's printing-office, as 
long as he should himself remain there. Benjamin, it 
appears, had begun to think seriously of returning to his 



NEW PARTNERSHIP. 129 



native town. In this interview, however, Meredith in- 
duced him to abandon that idea, reminding him that 
Keimer was in debt for every part of his establishment ; 
that his creditors were growing very apprehensive about 
their pay ; that he managed all his concerns in the loosest 
and most ruinous manner, sometimes selhng thmgs at 
bare cost, when hard pressed for cash, and sometimes 
making sales on credit, without even keepmg an account 
of them; that bankruptcy must, therefore, inevitably 
overtake him soon, and thus make an opening, which 
Beniamin might occupy to certain and great advantage. 
When Benjamin urged his utter inabihty to avail him- 
self of the contemplated opening, from his want of money, 
Meredith expressed the most confident belief that his 
father, who entertained a very favorable opinion of Ben- 
iamin, would furnish the requisite money, provided a 
partnership Vould be formed between the two young 
men ; that if Benjamin would agree to such an arrange- 
ment, they could, by spring, when his own engagement 
with Keimer would expire, have a press, types, and a 
full printing-office equipment, fresh from London, and be 
ready to cany their plan promptly into effect; and 
frankly admitting his own deficiencies as a .wkman 
as well as his ignorance of the trade, he concluded by 
proposing that, if Benjamin consented to the P-J-^' ^- 
skill and knowledge of the business should be consideied 
equivalent to the money and stock contributed on his 
own account, and they would divide the proceeds of the 
whole concern equally. . . .i ^ 

Such a proposition could not be «f«™'^f,*^" J" 
ceptable to Benjan>in. and he at once .-^ef --"^ f^'^^' 
to it Mr. Meredith, the elder, being m town, Benjamin, 
on conferi-ing with him, found that he approved of the 
proposed arrangement, not only on account of its prob- 
able advantages in reference to business, but for the ad- 



130 I'IFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ditional reason that Benj^inhadsomuch influence with 
his son, as to have aheady induced liim to abstain, for a 
considerable period, from the perilous practice of fre- 
quent tippling, and would, he hoped, be able to cure him 
of it entirely, upon their becoming more closely connect- 
ed by the ties of a common interest. 

A list of the articles needed for the new partnership 
was drawn up by Benjamin and delivered to the elder 
Meredith, to be placed by him in the hands of a merchant 
who was to import them from London; and the whole 
affair was to be kept strictly to themselves, until, upon 
the arrival of their equipment, they should be ready at 
once to open shop. 

There was at that time but one printing-office in Phil- 
adelphia, besides Keimer's ; and that one, which was 
Bradford's, having no occasion for any additional hands, 
Benjamin was for a few days out of employment. Just 
then, however, it became known that the colonial author- 
ities of New Jersey were about to issue a considerable 
amount of paper currency, called, in those days, " bills of 
credit," because they were issued on the credit of the 
colonial government. The printing of the bills in ques- 
tion would be a very desirable job, but to execute them 
properly would require types and cuts of several kinds, 
which nobody in either colony, except Benjamin, could 
prepare ; and Keimer, anxious to do the work, but fear- 
ing lest Bradford should get the advantage of him, and 
secure the contract for the job, by engaging Benjamin, 
sent the latter a very conciliatory note, purporting that 
" old friends should not part for a few words, the effect 
of sudden passion," and earnestly desiring him to come 
back to his former situation. 

To this request Benjamin yielded, chiefly through the 
persuasion of Meredith, who urged the benefit which 
would accrue to himself from the instruction and super- 



JERSEY PAPER MONEY. 131 

vision of his friend and teacher ; and on returning, he 
found Keimer disposed to be very civil, and to render his 
situation in all respects pleasant. 

To crown this reconciliation, and fill for the time, the 
measure of Keimer's content, he obtained the Jersey 
contract, and for the neater and more satisfactory execu- 
tion of it, Benjamin ** contrived," as he says, " a copper- 
plate press, the first that had been seen in the country, 
and cut several ornaments and checks for the bills." As 
the work was to be performed at Burlington, N. J., he 
went thither with Keimer, and completed the job in the 
most acceptable manner ; the latter receiving for it a sum 
considerable enough to patch up his credit, and enable 
him to continue his business for some time longer. 

This job, in its general and permanent results, how- 
ever, was far more advantageous to Benjamin, than to his 
employer. While at Burlington, he became personally 
acquainted with a considerable number of the leading 
men of that colony. The provincial assembly, then sit- 
ting, raised a committee to superintend the printing of 
these bills, and especially to see that no more should be 
struck off than the number authorized by law. For the 
satisfactory discharge of this duty, it was deemed proper 
that some one of the committee should be in constant at- 
tendance upon the press, and he was usually accompa- 
nied by one or more of his friends. The public station 
and character of these men, the nature of the business 
in hand, and the topics suggested by these circumstances, 
gave occasion for much pleasant and profitable conversa- 
tion, in which Benjamin, being far better qualified than 
Keimer to participate, received the chief attention of 
their visiters ; and so favorable was the impression, which 
his intelligence, good sense, and general deportment, made 
upon them, that he soon began to receive invitations to 
their houses; and while his companion was comparative- 



132 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ly neglected, he became^p^self the object of many civil- 
ities, which not only ripened into various lasting personal 
friendships, but helped to prepare the way for that rapid 
development of public esteem and confidence, which, not 
very long after, became so universal and so conspicuous. 

Of the personal friends, whom his stay of not quite 
three months in Burlington, on this occasion, enabled him 
to count among his acquisitions, he has mentioned the 
names of several. Among them, besides various mem- 
bers of the Assembly, with whom his employment brought 
him into contact, were also the provincial secretary Sam- 
uel Bustill, one of the provincial judges by the name of 
Allen, and Isaac Ducrow the surveyor-general. " The last 
named person," says Franklin, "was a shrewd, sagacious 
old man, who told me that he began for himself, when 
young, by wheeling clay for the brick-makers ; learned 
to write after he was of age ; carried the chain for sur- 
veyors, who taught him surveying; and he had now, by 
his industry, acquired a good estate." Franklin adds 
that, without having said a word in relation to his own 
plans, Ducrow remarked to him : " I foresee that you 
will soon work this man [Keimer] out of his business, 
and make a fortune in it, at Philadelphia." 

Such were some of the fruits, which the good sense 
and discretion, the information which had been so assid- 
uously accumulated, and the conciliating manners of a 
young man but twenty-one years of age, enabled him to 
gather, in less than three months, in a place where he 
was previously a stranger, and while working as a trades- 
man. 



ENTRANCE UPON MANHOOD. 133 



CHAPTER XIII. 

HIS ENTRANCE UPON MANHOOD HIS PRINCIPLES AND 

CHARACTER NEW ASSOCIATIONS. 

Franklin had now reached a stage in the journey of life 
of deeper interest, and involving cares of a wider range, 
and graver character than any he had yet encountered. 
The laws of the land, taking their rule from the statutes 
of nature, would no longer look upon him as under the 
guardianship or control of others. Thenceforward they 
would ti-eat him as a man of full age, himself alone ame- 
nable for his conduct in whatever relations he might as- 
sume ; and he was about to embark in business, not as a 
servant working for fixed wages, and comparatively ex- 
empt from the anxieties of forethought and accountabil- 
ity, but as himself a master and the employer of others, 
taking his place in the community as one of its members, 
with the serious responsibilities of life pressing directly 
upon him. 

In his autobiography, when, long years after, he is 
looking back upon this important stage in his career, he 
presents an outline of his own character so far as it was 
then developed, and of the principles and opinions, with 
which he was about to commence manhood, conduct his 
private affairs, and perform his part as a member of so- 
ciety. This general estimate of himself, and of his moral 
condition, with the glance he gives at the history of his 
opinions and way of thinking on moral and religious sub- 

12 



134 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

jects, is instructive as sMPving how early and to what an 
unusual degree he had cultivated the habit of self ex- 
amination, and how assiduously he had labored to settle 
his views on points of such weighty concern to every per- 
son, who has not forgotten that he is an accountable 
being; and as showing, also, notwithstanding grave er- 
rors and defects, how sincerely he sought for truth, and 
aimed to act toward his fellow-men, according to the 
requirements of justice, and the dictates of benevo- 
lence. 

This account of himself will be best given chiefly in 
his own words, not merely for the sake of accuracy and 
the livelier interest they will impart to the subject, but 
also for the sake of justice ; inasmuch as the frank hones- 
ty with which it is rendered, and his faults are recorded, 
is not only praiseworthy in itself, but formed one of the 
most salient and beautiful features of his character; and 
if candidly considered in connection with the tone of 
confession and self-censure which pervades the statement, 
will, it is believed, satisfy every fair-minded reader, that 
his errors of opinion were not the result of a perverse 
and intractable temper, or unteachable spirit, but the er- 
rors of an ingenuous y;outh, whose consciousness of men- 
tal power had been naturally exalted to over-confidence, 
by his obvious superiority to most of those with whom 
he had yet had an opportunity to measure himself; and 
that in the midst of mistakes he did not obstinately shut 
his mind against more enlightened convictions, but was 
ready cheerfully to receive truth, as well as eager to find 
it. 

The exhibition, even of the errors, whether of opinion 
or conduct, of a man of so honest and frank a spirit, can 
hardly fail to be profitable, both for warning and imita- 
tion; especially, when, as in this instance, subsequent and 
wider observation of human life, and a richer experience. 



OPINIONS. 135 

led him, on fuller reflection and in the maturity of his 
faculties, to detect such errors and renounce them. 

" Before I enter upon my public appearance in busi- 
ness," says he to his son, to whom his narrative is ad- 
dressed, " it maiy be well to let you know the then state 
of my mind, with regard to my principles and morals, 
that you may see how far they influenced the future 
events of my life. My parents had early given me re- 
ligious impressions, and brought me through my child- 
hood piously, in the dissenting way. But I was scarce 
fifteen, when after doubting by turns several points as I 
found them disputed in the different books I read, I be- 
gan to doubt of the Revelation itself. Some books 
against deism fell into my hands, said to be the substance 
of sermons which had been preached at Boyle's lectures. 
It happened that they wrought an effect on me, quite 
contrary to what was intended by them. For the argu- 
ments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, ap- 
peared to me much stronger than the refutations. In 
short I soon became a thorough deist. My arguments 
perverted some others, particularly Collins and Ralph; 
but each of these having wronged me greatly, without 
the least compunction, and recollecting Keith's conduct 
toward me [he was another freethinker], and my own 
toward Vernon and Miss Read, which at times gave me 
gi'eat [mental] trouble — I began to suspect that this doc- 
trine, though it might be true, was not very useful." 

He then adverts to the pamphlet, which, as heretofore 
noticed, he wrote while working as a journeyman print- 
er in London. In that pamphlet, taking for his sole 
premises God's infinite wisdom, goodness, and power, 
but wholly overlooking man's free agency, he had never- 
theless extended his argument, not only to the works of 
creation and the ordinances of Providence, but to all hu- 
man action also ; that is, though taking for his premises 



136 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

the attributes of the Dei^only, yet embracing in his ar- 
gument not only what the Deity does, but what w<7wdoes 
also, he drew the sweeping conclusion that there can not 
possibly be anything wrong in the world ; that virtue and 
vice are only empty names, having no real existence; and 
that, not merely in the works and government of God, 
but in human conduct also, "whatever is, is right." 

Such was the scope of that crude performance. Of 
its fallacies, however, he soon became aware. Even be- 
fore commencing business with Meredith, in less than 
two years after it was written, its acuteness and cogency 
had, as he freely confesses, dwindled exceedingly in his 
own eyes ; and after a passing remark upon the unsatis- 
factory nature of all metaphysical reasoning on such 
topics, he proceeds as follows : — 

" I grew convinced that truth, sincerity, and integrity, 
in dealings between man and man, were of the utmost 
importance to the felicity of life ; and I framed written 
resolutions, which still remain in my journal-book, to 
practise them ever while I lived. Revelation had, indeed, 
no weight with me, as such ; but I entertained an opinion 
that, although certain actions might not be bad, hecause 
they were forbidden by it, or good, hecause it command- 
ed them, yet probably those actions might be forbidden 
hecause they were had for us, or commanded hecause 
they were beneficial to us, in their own nature, all cir- 
cumstances considered." 

The sentiment avowed in the forepart of the passage 
just cited, is worthy of all commendation, and the resolu- 
tions mentioned were well fulfilled through a long and 
honorable life. And the view, expressed in the latter 
portion of the same passage, of the ground of moral obli- 
gation, however defective in itself, is clearly better than 
the doctrine of the pamphlet ; for it admits the reality of 
the distinction between right and wrong, as well as the 



MORALS RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. 137 

existence of good and evil ; and by its influence, as he 
believed, was he preserved in the main from such gross 
immorality as might otherwise have resulted from the 
want of fixed religious principle, during the perilous 
season of youth, passed so much among strangers as to 
feel little restraint from the observation and opinion of 
others. The remark with which, by way of inference, 
he closes the review of himself, as he was when youth 
merged in manhood, will, when compared with the es- 
teem in which he was held by the community in which 
he lived, be allowed to be sufficiently modest. " I had, 
therefore," says he, " a tolerable character to begin the 
world with ; I valued it properly, and I determined to 
preserve it." 

The passage in the first of the extracts just presented, 
in which Franklin alludes to the effect on his mind pro- 
duced by reading certain sermons on deism, and by the 
manner in which the argument was conducted, can not 
fail to suggest to every considerate mind some grave 
reflections. Doubtless the cause of revealed truth has 
been much aided by argument, when conducted with 
ability and learning, and in a candid and discreet spirit ; 
and a full and lucid exhibition of the historical, as well 
as the intrinsic, evidences of the genuineness and au- 
thenticity of the sacred writings, is not only due to the 
momentous importance of the subject, but has been 
among the most efficient means of establishing their 
authority ^nd spreading their doctrines. Nevertheless, 
before a man presents himself to the world as a cham- 
pion of such a cause, it becomes him w^ell to consider 
what are his qualifications for the contest. The Scrip- 
tures themselves recognise the fact, that there is some- 
times a zeal which is not according to knowledge ; and 
the history of Christianity, especially the controversial 
portion of it, shows but too plainly that some who have 

12* 



138 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

written in its defence,#P(:>iilcl have done more wisely if 
they had left that defence to the arguments presented 
by the beauty of a Christian life, and the persuasion of 
a Christian example. A sedate and earnest mind, filled 
with the convictions of divine truth — a pious heart, 
warmed with sympathizing affections, and upheld by 
a faith and hope that can sustain adversity with cheer- 
ful resignation, and meet prosperity with a grateful and 
unselfish joy, as supplying the means, not of greater 
indulgence, but of a wider usefulness, and beaming over 
the whole pathway of life — have done more than all the 
volumes of polemics to shut the mouth of cavil, extend 
the influence of Christianity, and multiply its real fol- 
lowers. 

Not long after the return of the two printers from 
Burlington to Philadelphia, the types and other furni- 
ture for the new partnership arrived from London ; and 
both Meredith and Franklin were fortunate enough 
quietly to close their respective terms of service with 
Keimer, and leave him in peace, before he knew any- 
thing of their new arrangements. They hired a house 
near the market, at the moderate rent of twenty-four 
pounds ; and to assist in paying it, as well as to furnish 
themselves with convenient board and lodging, they took 
as an under-tenant Thomas Godfrey., with his family. 

Hardly had they set up theil* press, arranged their 
cases, and got ready for work, when George House, one 
of Franklin's acquaintances, introduced a man from the 
country, whom he had just met in the street, inquiring 
for a printer to do a small job for him. The new part- 
ners having exhausted their ready money in the multifa- 
rious details of preparation, this first piece of work, of- 
fering itself so opportunely and boding so well, was pe- 
culiarly gratifying. Indeed, so lively was the impression 
it made, that in recurring to it long after, Franklin de- 



THE FIRST CROWN A CROAKER. 139 

Glares that " this countryman's five shillings, being the 
first-fruits, and coming so seasonably, gave him more 
pleasure than any crown he had since earned ; and the 
gratitude he felt toward George House, had made him 
often more ready than he would otherwise, perhaps, have 
been, to assist young beginners." 

It must surely be gratifying to the reader, to observe 
how the incidents of life, even such as might usually be 
deemed unimportant, touched the feelings of such a man 
as Franklin, and instilled their lessons. It is in this way 
that common occurrences become instructive, and the 
mind is enriched and enlarged by experience. 

There was, it seems, in Philadelphia (and rarely is 
there to be found a neighborhood free from a similar 
pest), one of those unhappy persons called croakers; who 
never see the sun ; whose lives pass under a continual 
cloud ; who can discern in every new enterprise nothing 
but a new prognostic of evil ; who speak only to proph- 
esy disaster ; and though every prediction be regularly 
confuted by results, whose faith in their own inspiration, 
unaffected alike by arguments and events, remains stead- 
fast and immoveable. 

This Philadelphia croaker is described as ** a person 
of note, an elderly man, with a wise look, and a very 
grave manner of speaking;" and while yet personally 
unknown to Franklin, seeing him one day at his door, 
stopped, and asked if he was the young man who had 
recently opened a new printing-office. " Being an- 
swered in the affirmative," says Franklin, **he said he 
was sorry for me, because it was an expensive underta- 
king, and the expense would be lost ; for Philadelphia 
was a sinking place ; half the people already bankrupts, 
or nearly so ; all appearances to the contrary, such as 
new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain 
knowledge, fallacious ; for they were, in fact, the very 



140 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

things that would ruin l||^' and he proceeded with such 
a specification of present and coming calamities, as 
served to dej^ress, for the moment, even the manly hope- 
ful spirit and good sense of young Franklin, who, had 
this woful recital been made to him before he embarked 
with Meredith, would probably, as he relates himself, 
have been deterred from the undertaking. 

The " certain knowledge" of this croaker, proved, 
however, as usual in such cases, far less certain than his 
folly ; and the faithfulness of Providence, as well as the 
wisdom of those who trust in it, was abundantly vindi- 
cated by the result. " This person," as Franklin adds, 
" continued to live in this decaying j^lace, and to declaim 
in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house 
there, because all was going to destruction ; and at last 
I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much 
for one, as he might have bought it for, when he first be- 
gan croaking." 

While young Franklin was thus employed in his trade, 
and was making his way into business, he did not by any 
means neglect the improvement of his mind and his ad- 
vancement in knowledge. The number of his acquaint- 
ances in Philadelphia had also become considerably ex- 
tended, and in the course of the autumn of 1727, he in- 
duced most of the more intelHgent among them, to or- 
ganize themselves as a club for mutual improvement, 
under the name of the "Junto," to meet every Friday 
evening. 

The plan and regulations of this club were digested 
and drawn up by Franklin. Each member in turn was 
required to present to the club one or more questions ** on 
any point of morals, politics, or natural philosophy," to 
be debated at their weekly meetings; and once in every 
three months each was also to produce a more elaborate 
essay, digested and written by himself, on any subject he 



THE JUNTO. 141 

might choose. The debates, at the weekly meetings, 
were to be "conducted in a sincere spirit of inquiry af- 
ter truth, without fondness for dispute, or desire of vic- 
tory ;" and the better to preserve their temper, candor, 
and decorum, " all expressions of positiveness of opin- 
ion, and all direct contradiction," were, after a little ex- 
perience in the matter, " made contraband, and prohib- 
ited under small pecuniary penalties." 

To show how much well-directed thought was be- 
stowed upon the principles, on which this club was or- 
ganized and conducted, and to account for the eminent 
usefulness it attained and its consequent remarkable du- 
ration, some of its regulations and modes of proceeding 
are here presented : they will, moreover, furnish valua- 
ble hints to others disposed to avail themselves of similar 
means of mental and moral improvement, as well as help 
to illustrate the development and tendencies at that time, 
of Franklin's mind, from which they chiefly proceeded. 

A permanent list of queries was prepared, of which 
every member was bound to keep by him a copy; and at 
each meeting it was the president's first duty, on taking 
the chair, to put the following question, to be considered 
as addressed to each member present : " Have you read 
over these queries this morning, in order to consider 
what you might have to offer to the Junto, touching any 
one of them'?" Whereupon the several members made 
answer, in proper order, according to the matter they 
had for remark. 

To show the range and aim of these standing queries, 
the substance of a number of them may be stated as fol- 
lows : the first one inquired if any member had found, in 
the book he had last read, in any department of science, 
literature, or the mechanic arts, anything of such claim 
to attention, that it would be useful to lay it before the 
club. Another query asked if any member knew of 



142 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

any recent act of any |j^zen, marked by such merit as 
to deserve especial praise and imitation, or of any error 
or misconduct, against which the members should be 
warned. Others inquired if any particularly unhappy ef- 
fects of intemperance, passion, or other vice or folly, had 
been recently observed ; or any marked and happy effects 
of temperance, prudence, moderation, or other virtue; if 
any deserving stranger had recently come to the city, to 
whom the club could render any useful aid; if any mem- 
ber desired the friendship of some person, which one of 
the club could with propriety procure for him, or if he 
could be aided by them in any other honorable way ; if 
there was any meritorious young man just starting in 
business, to whom they could render any assistance; if 
any member had recently received important benefits 
from some person not present; if any member was en- 
gaged in any important undertaking, in which he could 
be aided by the counsel and information of the club, or 
any of its associates ; if any idea, or plan, had recently 
occurred to any member, which might be rendered use- 
ful to any class of people, to their own community, or to 
men generally; if any special defect, or mischief, had been 
recently perceived in any of the laws of the province, and 
if any effectual remedy could be pointed out, so as to 
make it expedient to lay the matter before the provincial 
assembly ; or if any recent encroachment upon the 
rights and liberties of the people had been detected. 

These inquiries, it will be seen, appertain to the social 
relations of men, and bear directly upon their social du- 
ties ; and their tendency to promote the habitual discharge 
of those duties, by bringing them regularly forward, ev- 
ery week, for serious acknowledgment and consideration, 
seems too palpable to be disputed. The faithful obser- 
vance of the principles of conduct involved in them, was 
well calculated to encourage habits of self-examination, 



WELL-DEVISED REGULATIONS. 143 

and self^discipline, on the part of individuals, and to foster 
mutual goodwill, not only among the associates of the 
Junto, but toward men generally; and by calling into 
exercise a more vigilant public spirit, to form more val- 
uable members of the commonwealth. 

But these standing queries, which formed so peculiar 
and remarkable a feature of this club, were designed, not 
as doubtful points to be debated, but as modes of present- 
ing to the attention of the members, just occasions for the 
discharge of acknowledged obligations. They were calls 
to duty, not subjects for dispute; and belonged to that 
part of the organization intended for the moral improve- 
ment of the associates of the Junto. Their mental im- 
provement and advancement in useful knowledge, they 
sought in the discussion of other questions of a different 
nature, and in the investigations requisite to render such 
discussion profitable. 

From the few published specimens of this class of 
questions, it would seem that the forms and institutions 
of government, the rights of the people, the principles of 
political economy, the permanent interests of the coun- 
try, the legislation of the British government relating to 
the colonies, and other points of general politics, stood 
first in favor, and the various departments of natural 
philosophy next, as supplying subjects for discussion; 
though points of practical morality and the subtleties of 
metaphysical speculation were occasionally interspersed. 
Viewed collectively, however, they show that the dis- 
cussions of the Junto took a wide and elevated range ; 
and the research they called for, together with the exer- 
cise of the best powers of the mind in arranging mate- 
rials and framing arguments, tended to foster a taste 
for earnest study, well suited to exert a wholesome influ- 
ence on personal character, inspire manly views of duty, 
and give a higher value to life. 



144 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

The terms of admis^pn to this club were as peculiar 
as its standing queries. These, like those, turned exclu- 
sively on the social relations. Instead of demanding 
money in the form of initiation fees, they required of the 
applicant for admission a simple declaration that he har- 
bored no inimical feeling toward any existing member ; 
that he cherished a sentiment of goodwill toward his fel- 
low-men generally, iiTespective of sect or party; that no 
man ought to be harmed on account of his opinions 
merely ; and that he held truth in esteem for its own sake 
and would endeavor to seek it, receive it, and impart it, 
in a spirit of candor and impartiality. 

Such were the origin, scope, and spirit of an associa- 
tion, which acquired a high local reputation in its day, 
proved exceedingly useful to its members, exerted a val- 
uable influence in the community, and even upon the pub- 
lic aff"airs of the province of Pennsylvania ; and after a 
prosperous existence of forty years, was selected as the 
healthy and vigorous stock, planted and tended by Frank- 
lin, on which, chiefly by the instrumentality of the same 
assiduous and enlightened cultivator, was engrafted the 
American Philosophical Society, of which also he was the 
first president, and which has borne still more abundant 
fruit, the volumes of its transactions having been among 
the most efficient aids to the progress of science in this 
country. 



USEFULNESS OF THE JUNTO. 145 



CHAPTER XIV. 

USEFULNESS OF THE JUNTO ORIGINAL MEMBERS BUSI- 
NESS GROWTH IN PUBLIC ESTEEM OPINIONS. 

The account of the Junto given in the preceding chap- 
ter, has been made somewhat full, not merely fi'om a be- 
lief that it would be both gratifying and useful, but main- 
ly because it was one of the early works of Franklin, 
and in truth, if duly considered in its various bearings, 
the most important work he had yet performed. Speak- 
ing of it himself, in his autobiography, he pronounces 
it, and with good reason, *'the best school of philosophy, 
morals, and politics, then existing in the province ;" and 
he wisely ranks among its benefits, not only the research 
and taste for solid studies, which it promoted, but also 
the "better habits of conversation," which resulted from 
compliance with regulations requiring mutual deference, 
courtesy, and candor, and forbidding all direct contradic- 
tion and positiveness of assertion, in conversational dis- 
cussion, as well as in more formal debate — habits to 
which, as the chief cause, he justly ascribes the remark- 
able success and duration of the club. 

Nor was this all. The most striking peculiarities of that 
association, were but the embodiment of some of the most 
marked characteristics of the mind and modes of think- 
ing from which they proceeded ; and the pertinence of the 
sketch given, as well as its intrinsic interest, in this connec- 
tion, is farther seen in the conclusive evidence it furnishes, 
13 



146 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

of the manly studies i^ch must even then have occu- 
pied most of Franklin's time not demanded by his busi- 
ness ; thus showing how early and industriously he be- 
gan to prepare himself for those philosophical inquiries, 
in which he attained such distinction, and to accumulate 
those ample stores of political knowledge, and enter up- 
on that training of himself in the principles of civil lib- 
erty and just government, which enabled him to render, 
during almost half a century, such important service to 
his country. 

Of such an association, which not only proved emi- 
nently successful in promoting its direct objects, but ex- 
erted an important influence in various ways, on the sub- 
sequent career of its chief founder, it will be gi'atifying 
to know something of his original associates, and especial- 
ly to see from what occupations, himself a young trades- 
man working daily for his daily bread, he obtained his ear- 
liest coadjutors, in this honorable endeavor to enlarge their 
knowledge, and enhance their individual value and means 
of usefulness. For this purpose we copy Franklin's own 
rapid and graphic sketch of the first members of the club. 

The first one named was Joseph Breintnall, " a copier 
of deeds for the scriveners ; a good-natured, friendly, 
middle-aged man; a great lover of poetry, reading all 
he could meet with, and writing some that was tolerable; 
very ingenious in making little knick-knacks, and of sen- 
sible conversation." 

Next was Thomas Godfi-ey, ** a self-taught mathema- 
tician, great in his way, and afterward inventor of what 
is now called Hadley's Quadrant. But he knew little 
out of Ms tvay, and was not a pleasing companion ; as, 
like most great mathematicians I have met with, he ex- 
pected universal precision in everything said, or was for 
ever denying or distinguishing upon trifles, to the disturb- 
ance of all conversation. He soon left us." 



JUNTO-MEN MORE CUSTOM. 147 

Another was Nicholas Scull, '* a sui*veyor, afterward 
surveyor-general ; who loved books, and sometimes made 
a few verses." 

Another was William Parsons, " bred a shoemaker, 
but loving reading, had acquired a considerable share of 
mathematics, which he first studied with a view to astrol- 
ogy, and afterward laughed at it. He also became sur- 
veyor-general.' 

Another was William Maugridge, ** a joiner, but a most 
exquisite mechanic, and a solid sensible man." 

Hugh Meredith, Stephen Potts, and George Webb, 
were also members, but with them the reader is already 
acquainted. 

Next was Robert Grace, " a young gentleman of some 
fortune, generous, lively, and witty ; a lover of punning 
and of his friends." 

The last one named was William Coleman, " then a 
merchant's clerk," says Franklin, " about my own age, 
who had the coolest, clearest head, the best heart, and 
the exactest morals, of almost any man I ever met with. 
He became afterward a merchant of great note, and one 
of our provincial judges. Our friendship continued with- 
out interruption, to his death, upward of forty years." 

To this brief catalogue of the first members of the Jun- 
to, time added, at intervals, not a few of the ornaments of 
Philadelphia, and among them, some names, besides that 
of Franklin, of a wide and lasting celebrity. 

Among the extraneous and collateral benefits which 
soon began to accrue to the principal founder of this 
club, from his connection with it, was an increase of busi- 
ness for the young firm of Meredith and Franklin. In- 
deed, it was one of the specified objects of the club, 
though a subordinate one, and a recognised duty of the 
members, to promote the rightful private interests of each 
other, whenever opportunity should enable them to do so, 



148 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

by just and honorable n^ns. In conformity with this 
obligation, Joseph Brientnall, who was a Quaker, pro- 
cured for the new partnership the printing of forty sheets 
of a History of the Quakers, the other sheets having 
been engaged to Keimer. 

The rate of pay for this job, however, is stated to have 
been very scanty ; and to make it yield any profit what- 
ever, it was necessary " to work exceeding hard." The 
size of the book was folio; the paper of the sort then 
called pro patria ; the type for the text pica, and for the 
notes long primer. Of these folio pages, " I composed," 
says Franklin, " a sheet a day, and Meredith worked it 
off at the press. It was often 11 o'clock at night, and 
sometimes later, before I had finished my distribution 
[of the types thus set] for the next day's work ; as the 
little jobs sent in by our other friends, now and then put 
us back. But so determined was I to continue doing a 
sheet a day of the folio, that one night, when, having 
imposed my forms, I thought my day's work was over, 
one of them by accident was broken, and two of the 
pages reduced to pi. I immediately distributed and 
composed it over again, before I went to bed." 

This was, indeed, ** working hard." But such perse- 
vering industry soon began to yield its appropriate re- 
ward ; for it soon became obvious to the community, and 
gave a character, which secured confidence and credit. 
The merchants of Philadelphia, it appears, had a club 
called the Every-Niglit Club. The new partnership in 
the printing business having been casually mentioned in 
this club, one evening, the opinion was pretty generally 
expressed that "it must fail, there being already two 
printers in the place." One of the company, however, 
(Dr. Baird,) thought differently; for, said he, "the in- 
dustry of that Franklin is superior to anything I ever 
saw of the kind. I see him still at work when I go 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS MODE OF WORSHIP. 149 

home from the club, and he is at work again before his 
neighbors are out of bed." 

The words of Dr. Baird made an impression on his 
hearers, which produced shortly after, from one of them, 
a spontaneous offer to these industrious printers to sup- 
ply them with a stock of stationery. But, though grati- 
fied by the offer, they declined it, not being disposed then 
to take up that branch of business. The remark which 
Franklin adds to his relation of these incidents is worthy 
of attention. " I mention this industry the more freely," 
says he, " that those of my posterity who shall read it, 
may know the use of that virtue, when they see its effects 
in my favor, throughout this narrative." Such was the 
value placed upon industry, and the honor in which labor 
was held, by one of the wisest men of his own times or 
any other. 

About this time, Franklin drew up one of the most 
remarkable papers to be found among his writings. It 
is entitled : " Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion ;" 
and is dated the 20th of November, 1728, when he was 
approaching the end of his twenty-third year. Much 
thought was obviously bestowed upon it, both as to mat- 
ter and method, and it is, in style and language, as pol- 
ished and exact as anything he ever wrote. It is, in fact, 
a kind of liturgy — uniting a confession of faith with a 
formulary of worship, suited to the use of an individual 
in his private devotions ; and it is manifestly pervaded 
by a deep feeling of sincerity. It is far too long for 
insertion here ; and yet it has in it so much of its author, 
that to omit all notice of it would be to overlook some 
of the most marked peculiarities of his mental habits and 
modes of thinking, at that period of his life. For the 
illustration of those peculiarities, therefore, some account 
of this paper seems proper ; but a brief one will suffice. 

This document, then, states the author's belief in one 
13* 



150 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

infinitely perfect, eternal, and supreme Deity ; and in 
various classes of subordinate celestial beings, the high- 
est of whom, though created and dependent, are very 
exalted, good, and powerful ; invested with high func- 
tions by the one Supreme, whom they worship and obey ; 
who are themselves also entitled to reverence and hom- 
age from all inferior intelligent creatures, including 
man ; and one of whom is placed, with delegated author- 
ity, at the head of our world, as the more immediate 
superintendent of its affairs and occupants. 

Following the articles of belief, comes the formulary 
of worship, arranged in three parts, entitled Adoration, 
Petition, and Thanks, agreeing in this respect, substan- 
tially, with the usual order of divine service, and consti- 
tuting what the author denominates ** Acts of Religion." 
To give a proper guidance to the mind at all times, while 
engaged in these acts, and to furnish it with fitting and 
worthy reasons for praise and thanksgiving, as well as 
with important and well-considered objects of supplica- 
tion, this formulary was composed. 

The first act, adoration, commences by reverently ad- 
dressing the Deity as Creator and Father, and proceeds 
with ascriptions of praise for his power, wisdom, and 
goodness, as displayed in his works and laws, the order 
of nature, the course of his providence, the rectitude of 
his moral government, his abhorrence of all evil passions 
and wicked deeds, and his love for whatever is true, 
benevolent, and just. 

Adoration is followed, first, by a short interval of 
meditation ; then by a hymn ; then by reading some 
discourse designed to promote the love and practice of 
virtue ; then comes the second part, entitled '* Petition," 
a series of supplications for moral and spiritual bles- 
sings ; and then the service closes with " Thanks" for 
blessings already bestowed. 



HIGH MORAL VIEWS. 151 

Of the peculiarities of sentiment indicated in this 
document, there is one which it may be interesting to 
notice more distinctly. Among all its petitions, there is 
^not one for external prosperity. The Deity is suppli- 
cated only for moral and spiritual blessings ; for mental 
soundness, right principles, virtuous sentiments, and rec- 
titude of conduct ; or, as related of Solomon, for ** a 
wise and understanding heart," that he might discern 
the truth and do right ; to which the riches, honor, and 
length of days not asked for, were bountifully added. 
For the peculiarity mentioned, the paper itself alleges, 
as the reason, that, in our human frailty and unfore- 
seeing ignorance, we can never be certain that outward 
possessions may not prove a snare instead of a benefit ; 
and that it is wiser, and more in the true spirit of filial 
trust, to *' take no thought" for such things, but calmly 
rely on the established course of a beneficent Providence, 
for those means of comfortable living which are the 
usual recompense of steady industry and an honest life, 
inasmuch as "our heavenly Father knoweth that we 
have need of these things." 

Such are the scope and spirit of these petitions. To 
show the form in which they are offered, a specimen or 
two will suffice. They commence as follows : — 

" That I may be preserved from atheism, impiety, and 
profaneness ; and in my addresses to thee, avoid irrever- 
ence, ostentation, and hypocrisy — help me, O Father!" 

" That I may be faithful to my countiy, careful for its 
good, valiant in its defence, and obedient to its laws, 
abhorring treason as much as tyranny — help me, O 
Father!" 

Thus the petitions proceed, asking that the petitioner 
may be humble, sincere, merciful, forgiving, candid, in- 
genuous, faithful ; liberal to the poor, tender to the feeble, 
reverent to the aged, compassionate to the wretched, 



152 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

temperate in all things, v/atchful against pride and anger, 
ready to protect the innocent, humane, neighborly, hos- 
pitable to strangers, impartial in judgment, upright and 
fair in dealing, ever acting with probity and honor — 
grouping, in thirteen distinct paragraphs like the above 
in form, the endowments and qualities, the traits of char- 
acter and principles of conduct, which belong to a good 
and useful man in the varied relations of life, and in- 
cluding *' whatsoever things are true, honest, just, lovely, 
and of good report." 

In the concluding part, thanks are rendered for 
" peace and liberty ; for food and raiment, for corn, and 
wine, and milk, and every kind of healthful nourish- 
ment; for the common blessings of air and light; for 
useful fire and delicious water; for knowledge, litera- 
ture, and every useful art; for friends and their prosper- 
ity, and for the fewness of his enemies;" the closing 
paragraph summing up his gratitude in the following 
comprehensive form : — 

" For all thy innumerable benefits — for life, and rea- 
son, and the use of speech ; for health, and joy, and 
every pleasant hour — good God, I thank thee !" 

That the document described contains many elevated 
thoughts and just sentiments, no one will probably feel 
disposed to deny. Indeed, its general accordance with 
the purely preceptive portions of the New Testament 
is manifest. Considered as a summary of religious faith 
and of the grounds of practical morality, it may perhaps 
most properly be said to be deficient, rather than wrong. 
But the deficiency, as we regard it, is a very material 
one; inasmuch as it consists in the failure to recognise 
any authoritative revelation of truth from heaven, or any 
fact, principle, or rule of conduct, peculiar to Christian- 
ity ; thus losing not only the inestimable benefit deriva- 
ble from the hiQ:hest sanctions even of the moral truths 



PROJECTED NEWSPAPER WEBB's TREACHERY. 153 

it embraces, and the surest safeguards of the virtues it 
commends, but overlooking also what the experience of 
life, in every generation, has proved to be the most sus- 
taining, ennobling, and consolatory views of the rela- 
tions of the Deity to the human race ; of the motives he 
has supplied, and the means he has in his mercy pro- 
vided, for their highest improvement, their truest and 
most durable welfare. 

Our task, however, is narration — not discussion; and 
opinions and principles are noticed, not as points to be 
argued here, but simply as facts necessary to a faithful 
and impartial exhibition of the mental history and pro- 
gressive development of character, of the man whose 
life we are attempting to delineate. 

Franklin being now established in his trade, and grow- 
ing in the favor and confidence of the community, his 
business, as well as his habits of study and ready com- 
mand of his pen, naturally suggested the idea of pub- 
lishing a newspaper, which he determined to undertake 
as soon as he should feel a little more assured of his 
position. While he was maturing this design in his 
own mind, and waiting the proper time to announce it 
and commence the publication, George Webb — who, 
with means furnished by a generous female friend, had 
redeemed the remnant of time and service for which he 
was bound to Keimer — applied to Meredith and Frank- 
lin to be employed by them as a journeyman. They 
did not just then want more hands ; but Franklin un- 
warily communicated to Webb his design respecting a 
newspaper, with the reasons which influenced him; and 
added that, when ready to start the publication, they 
would probably wish to employ him. 

Franklin's expectation of success with his contem- 
plated paper, was founded on his knowledge of the fact 
that Bradford's paper, the only one then published in 



154 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

the place, though a poor thing and most unskilfully man- 
aged in all respects, nevertheless paid well ; and he felt 
therefore, the strongest confidence that a well-conducted 
paper — that should present its readers with, not only a 
general and well-compiled summary of news, but sen- 
sible and intelligent views of public affairs, and other 
matters worth reading, on subjects in which people gen- 
erally took an interest — would be certain to find a lib- 
eral and growing support. 

This communication was made to Webb in strict con- 
fidence ; but he was base enough to disclose the whole 
project, without delay, to Keimer, who still more dis- 
honorably went immediately to work, without scruple, 
to avail himself of Franklin's ideas, and to pilfer for 
himself the advantages justly due to another, by forth- 
with issuing proposals for publishing a newspaper him- 
self, and Webb was engaged to assist him. 

This treachery excited the just indignation of Frank- 
lin, who, with characteristic promptitude and energy, 
but by fair and legitimate means, straightv/ay set himself 
to thwart the base interlopers, by giving to Bradford's 
paper attractions it had never before possessed. For 
this purpose he commenced a series of communications, 
under the title of the *' Busy-Body ;" and Bradford ex- 
tended the demand for his ** Weekly Mercury," by 
inserting them. 

This series was commenced in the forepart of Feb- 
ruary, 1729 — not many days after Franklin had com- 
pleted the twenty-third year of his age. The first five 
numbers, with the eighth, being unquestionably from his 
pen, are included in the last and fullest collection of 
Franklin's writings, edited by Dr. Sparks. The other 
twenty-four numbers of the series, thirty-two in all, are 
said to have been written chiefly, if not exclusively, by 
Franklin's worthy friend Brientnall, already known as 



THE BUSY-BODY THE NEWSPAPER. 155 

a member of the Junto. In this way the two friends 
drew the-public curiosity and attention to Bradford's 
Mercury so effectually, that Keimer's proposals were 
slighted and neglected. Still, notwithstanding the ridi- 
cule and contempt which he brought upon himself, 
Keimer, with the obstinate and perverse temper which 
formed so large an ingredient in his nature, persisted in 
starting his paper. After forcing it along, however, 
with great difficulty for several months, with a list of 
subscribers never exceeding ninety in number, he at last 
came, long before the end of the first year, with an offer 
to sell out, for a very small consideration, to Franklin, 
who, being now entirely prepared to go forward with 
his original design, closed with Keimer at once, and 
soon made the paper productive property. 

Franklin's numbers of the Busy-Body were his first 
attempt at essay- writing ; and they do him credit. He 
takes the office of a censor ?norum ; not, however, in the 
narrow modern sense, confining his strictures to mere 
manners ; but in the old and wider sense, including all 
the ways of men, and aiming at such notions and prac- 
tices, whether commonly prevalent or occurring occa- 
sionally, as offer fair subjects for either grave admonition 
or ridicule and satire ; and both his matter and style in- 
dicate, not only unusual talents, but a degree of culture 
altogether surprising in a young mechanic of twenty- 
three, who had been compelled to earn his living with 
the labor of his hands. The matter gives ample evi- 
dence of an observant mind, capable of nice discrimina- 
tion, abounding with good sense, and nourished by 
reading; while the style is natural, simple, and pure — 
flowing on smoothly, aiming only to convey the author's 
ideas in appropriate language, without straining after 
ornament, or that exaggerated force of expression which 
is so apt to run into bombast or fustian, from which 



156 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

never was writer more ^tirely free. It may be added, 
moreover, that the practical test, when applied to these 
pieces, not less than judicious criticism, bears witness to 
their merit; for they were successful in accomplishing 
their purpose. 

From a passage in the 5th number of the Busy-Body 
it seems that Keimer had entitled his paper, " The In- 
structor. On passing to the new proprietors, they chang- 
ed the title to ** Pennsylvania Gazette," but retained 
the numbering, and their first issue was numbered 40, 
dated September 25th, 1729; and though Meredith was 
at best but an indifferent workman, and had become a 
very intemperate drinker, yet Franklin, who had in fact 
the whole control of their business, took care that the 
paper should, on first coming from their press, exhibit, 
with its new type and workmanlike execution, an ap- 
pearance much superior to anything of the kind yet 
seen in that community. 

The improved aspect of the paper, and the character 
of its contents, at once attracted general attention. Some 
remarks from Franklin's pen, relative to a controversy 
then existing in Massachusetts, betvv^een the governor and 
the assembly of that colony, made such an impression 
upon the leading men in Philadelphia, that the paper and 
its new conductor became the frequent subject of their 
conversation, and in a few weeks their names were all 
on the subscription-list of the Gazette. This example 
of the leading men proved contagious, and " the list 
went on growing continually" — a result in which Frank- 
lin could recognise, much to his satisfaction, some of 
the advantages, as he modestly expresses it, " of hav- 
ing learned a little to scribble." 

The controversy mentioned, between the Massachu- 
setts assembly, and Burnet, then governor of that colony, 
related to the settlement of a salary for that officer ; and 



COLONIAL RIGHTS ASSERTED. 157 

as it involved substantially the same leading principles, 
vv^hich, forty-seven years later, produced the Declaration 
of Independence, and the war by which it was vindica- 
ted, it will be interesting to see that the same man, who, 
when his head was whitening: with age, assisted to make 
that Declaration, had, in the bloom of his first manhood, 
maintained the chartered rights and liberties of his coun- 
try. 

It was not the amount of salary, but the autliority 
under which it was claimed, and the manner in which 
the permanent settlement of it was demanded, that caused 
the controversy in question. Governor Burnet, by virtue 
of his instructions from the British cabinet, required of 
the assembly an immediate and permanent grant of a 
thousand pounds sterling yearly, to him and his succes- 
sors. This the assembly refused, on the ground that 
such demand was repugnant both to the English consti- 
tution and to the charter of the colony ; that no grant 
of their own money could be rightfully made, but by 
their own free will, and in such measure, and for such 
time, as they should consider just, or expedient; that 
thus only had their grants of money been made in time 
past, and thus only should tljey be made in time to come ; 
that as the governor was appointed by the king, if his 
salary were to be fixed in amount and permanent, he 
would be rendered too independent of the colony to con- 
sult its welfare ; for they judged, to use Franklin's 
words, that " there should be a mutual dependence be- 
tween the governm' and the governed, and that to make 
the governor independent, would be dangerous to their 
liberties, and the ready way to establish tyranny;" and 
he holds up the assembly to commendation for con- 
tinuing " thus resolutely to abide by what they think 
their right and that of the people they represent," not- 
withstanding the threats, or intrigues of the governor, or 

14 



158 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

his means of influence derived from the numerous posts 
of honor and profit at his disposal. 

Franklin was now beginning to reap the recompense 
of his early and persevering industry in training him- 
self as a writer ; and the men of intelligence and fore- 
sight in the community about him, " seeing a newspaper 
now in the hands of those who could also handle a pen," 
deemed it expedient to give it their countenance. In 
doing this, however, there is reason to believe that they 
were not all influenced by a purely disinterested desire 
to promote the success of the young tradesman, simply 
because he deserved it, or from a liberal public spirit 
only. Their own advantage, immediate, or remote, seems 
to have had place among the motives of some ; and 
very properly too, if such advantage was to be sought 
by none but worthy means. At all events, it was j^i'ob- 
ably not long before all were permitted to understand, 
whatever might have been the inducements of any to 
favor the new paper and its conductor, that neither of 
these could be used for any purpose not consistent with 
truth, or justice, or a manly and candid freedom. 

There is an anecdote that strikingly exemplifies what 
has last been said ; and though its date is not very ex- 
actly ascertained, it may be as fitly told in this con- 
nection as in any. It is not related by Franklin him- 
self, but it has obtained such currency, is so well wor- 
thy of record for the lesson it teaches, and has so much 
characteristic, if not literal truth, that it should not be 
omitted. It runs substantially as follows : — 

Having made in his paper some rather free and pun- 
gent strictures on the public acts of certain leading 
men of the city, some of Franklin's patrons thought fit 
to reprove him for so doing, and told him that others of 
his friends also disliked the strain of his remarks. Hav- 
ing calmly heard what they had to say, he invited them 



A REMARKABLE SUPPER. 159 

to sup with him, that evening, and to bring with them 
the other persons alluded to. When the appointed hour 
came, bringing his guests with it, he received them cour- 
teously, and again listened, with undisturbed temper, to 
their well-meant remonstrances. On repairing to the 
supper-table, great was their surprise at finding on it 
only two coarse Indian puddings, made of unbolted 
meal called " sawdust," to eat, and a stout jug of water, 
to drink. They civilly suppressed their surprise as well 
as they could, while their host, with laudable self-pos- 
session, helped them bountifully to pudding, and with a 
relishing air partook freely of it himself; hospitably 
pressing them, the while, to follow his example. This 
they politely strove to do ; but the effort was unavail- 
ing ; the pudding would not go down. After enjoying, 
for a reasonable time, the struggle between the polite- 
ness of his guests and their disgust at the pudding, Frank- 
lin rose, and with a smile and a bow that served for un- 
derscoring, spoke to them these significant words : — 
" My friends, he who can live on sawdust-pudding and 
water, as I can, is not dependent on any man's jDatron- 
age." 



160 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



CHAPTER XV. 

IS MADE PUBLIC PRINTER AN ERROR CORRECTED DIS- 
SOLVES PARTNERSHIP REAL FRIENDS CONTINUES 

RISING PAPER MONEY. 

While Franklin was thus industriously employed, ex- 
tending his business by the neatness and despatch with 
which he executed his work, and resolutely maintaining 
his own independence and the legitimate freedom of the 
press, his neighbor Bradford, though his private custom 
was gradually diminishing, still continued printer for the 
public authorities of the province. But his work was al- 
ways done in a slovenly manner; and having about this 
time, sent from his office an address of the colonial assem- 
bly to the governor, more carelessly done and more crowd- 
ed with blunders than usual, Franklin reprinted it with 
particular neatness and accuracy, and caused a copy of it 
to be laid before each member of the assembly. The differ- 
ence between the two editions was so palpable and great, 
that it could not fail to strike the most heedless ; and the 
members were so much pleased with the reprint, that 
they gave the whole of the public printing, by a strong 
vote, to Franklin & Meredith, for the year then com- 
mencing. 

This vote of the assembly was, of course, very grati- 
fying as well as advantageous to Franklin (for Meredith's 
habitual intemperance had rendered him more of a bur- 
den than a benefit to their business), and it was an addi- 
tional gratification to know that, among the friends who 



Vernon's money paid. 161 

had brought it to pass, was Mr. Hamilton, the eminent 
lawyer, to whom, as heretofore related, Franklin had 
rendered such valuable service, in London, by putting 
him on his guard against the plots of Riddlesden and 
Keith ; and who took the occasion of this annual vote 
for a public printer, as he did every fair occasion that 
subsequently occurred, to repay that service with his ac- 
tive and efficient friendship. 

The error, which had so long been a cause of anxiety 
and mortification to Franklin — into which, as will be 
remembered, he had been unwarily led by too much con- 
fidence in his early companion Collins — the error of 
lending to that misguided youth the money collected for 
Mr. Vernon, now at length produced the consequence 
foreboded, the amount being applied for, before he was 
in a condition to pay it. Much, however, as his self-es- 
teem was wounded by not being able to pay over the 
money on demand, he had the moral firmness to do the 
next best thing in his power, by dealing frankly and tru- 
ly with Vernon ; not adding to his own humiliation and 
self-reproach by any weak attempt to misrepresent the 
matter, or to prevaricate. ** Mr. Vernon," says Frank- 
lin, ** about this time put me in mind of the debt T owed 
him ; but he did not press me. I wrote to him an ingen- 
uous letter of acknowledgment, craving his forbearance 
a little longer, which he allowed me. As soon as I was 
able, I paid the principal with the interest and many 
thanks ; so, that erratum was in some degree corrected." 

It will be recollected that Franklin was expressly au- 
thorized to keep the money till it should be called for ; 
and it nowhere appears that any earlier call than the one 
now mentioned, was ever made by Vernon ; so that in 
reality, all the delay, in this affair, that could be justly 
complained of, or could be considered wrongful in the 
eye of the law, was that which took place subsequently 

14* 



162 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

to the above-named letter of Vernon. Nevertheless, 
Franklin's own solicitude on the subject, dated from the 
time when he first became fully conscious of his error, 
in having thus subjected himself to a liability which he 
could not instantly meet ; and as he had, clearly, taken 
the matter much more seriously to heart, than' had Mr. 
Vernon, he felt proportionately grateful for the forbear- 
ance extended to him. Long years after, while he was 
residing at Paris as minister of the United States to the 
court of France, his sensibility to the liberal kindness of 
Vernon, it is gratifying to relate, was further manifested 
by rendering important service to a young kinsman of 
that gentleman. 

A more serious embarrassment, in a mere pecuniary 
sense, and the more annoying from its having never been 
anticipated, now befell him. Mr. Meredith, senior, it will 
be remembered, was to furnish the money for setting up 
the firm of Franklin & Meredith in business. The whole 
sum to be furnished by him was two hundred pounds, 
one half of which he had paid up ; but the other half, 
now overdue, was not forthcoming, and he was unable to 
raise it. The merchant who had imported the furniture 
of the printing-office, and to whom the money was due, 
after long waiting, lost his patience and commenced a 
suit against both the elder Meredith and the two part- 
ners. The regular course of the suit would give a little 
time ; but as there was no real defence to be made, that 
time would soon run out ; and if the money could not 
be raised to meet the judgment that must come, the 
whole establishment would be sold by the sheriff under 
an execution, and the j^Jrospects of two young men, now 
opening so fairly, be utterly blasted. 

This unhappy state of things became known, of course, 
to Franklin's friends ; and he now had occasion, not on- 
ly to realize, with livelier emotions than ever before, the 



NOBLE SENTIMENTS. 163 

advantages of that character he had established for res- 
olute self denial and persevering industry, but to under- 
stand, also, vi^ith deeper insight, the nature and value of 
true friendship. 

** In this distress," says he in his own account of 
this matter, '' two true friends, whose kindness I have 
never forgotten, nor ever shall forget while I can remem- 
ber anything, came to me, separately and unknown to 
each other, and, without any application from me, offered 
each of them to advance me all the money that should 
be necessary to enable me to take the whole of the busi- 
ness upon myself, if that should be practicable ; but they 
did not like my continuing the partnership with Mere- 
dith ; who, as they said, was often seen drunk in the 
streets, or playing at low games in alehouses, much to 
our discredit." 

Those two generous friends were William Coleman 
and Robert Grace, to whom the reader has been already 
introduced in the Junto. Straitened and sore-pressed 
as he was, however, and menaced with at least tempo- 
rary ruin by losing the fruits of his long and arduous la- 
bor, Franklin now showed the real strength and noble- 
ness of his character, by his reply to his friends. He 
told them that he considered himself under such obliga- 
tions to the Merediths, for the advantages he had deri- 
ved from his connection with them, that he could not, 
with honor and a good conscience, urge a dissolution of 
the partnership, so long as they entertained a hope of 
being able to perform their engagements ; but, if they 
should find themselves wholly unable to do so, and the 
partnership be thus broken up, he should then feel per- 
fectly free to avail himself of the proffered aid. 

This affair was alike honorable to each of the parties 
concerned ; to Franklin, for his fine sense of justice and 
upright dealing toward the Merediths ; and to his two 



164 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

friends, not only for the i#Rle sentiments which prompted 
their generous offers, but also, in a case like this, for their 
really enlightened public spirit, in coming to the aid of 
one, who had given such unequivocal proofs of his abili- 
ty and disposition to be useful to the community, and to 
render it yet greater and more valuable service. 

The affairs of the partnership continued in the unpleas- 
ant and hopeless condition described, for a while longer, 
when Franklin one day said to his well-meaning but very 
unprofitable partner : " Perhaps your father is dissatis- 
fied at the part you have undertaken, in this affair of 
ours, and is unwilling to advance for you and me, what 
he would, for you. If that is the case, tell me, and I 
will resign the whole to you, and go about my business." 
To this Meredith ingenuously answered: "No; my 
father has really been disappointed, and is really una- 
ble ; and I am unwilling to distress him further, I see 
this is a business I am not fit for. I was bred a farmer, 
and it was folly in me to come to town, and put myself, 
at thirty years of age, an apprentice to learn a new trade. 
Many of our Welsh people are going to settle in North 
Carolina, where land is cheap. I am inclined to go 
with them and follow my old employment. You may 
find friends to assist you. If you will take the debts of 
the company upon you, return to my father the hundred 
pounds he has advanced, pay my little personal debts, 
and give me thirty pounds and a new saddle, I will re- 
linquish the partnership and leave the whole in your 
hands.' 

Considering all the circumstances of this case, and 
particularly the fact that Franklin was himself the very 
life of the concern, which would not have been worth a 
penny without him, it must be conceded that Meredith 
did not undervalue his own interest, in the terms pro- 
posed. But Franklin, looking no doubt more at the ca- 



PARTNERSHIP DISSOLVED. 165 

pabilities of the establishment, than at the results al- 
ready attained, accepted the proposals on the spot ; and 
the bargain thus promptly made, was duly executed in 
writing, before the parties separated. 

Meredith, shortly after, with his thirty pounds and 
clear of debt, mounted his new saddle for North Caro- 
lina ; " whence," says Franklin, " he sent me next year 
two long letters, containing the best account that had 
been given of that country, the climate, the soil, and 
husbandry ; for in those matters he was very judicious." 
The letters, it is added, were published in the paper, and 
gave general satisfaction. Aside from his pernicious 
practice of drinking to excess, Meredith appears to have 
been a sensible and amiable man ; and it is gratifying, 
in taking leave of him, to have some reason to believe 
that, on breaking off his unfortunate associations in Phil- 
adelphia, he was enabled to amend his life, and become 
a more useful and respectable man. 

Having now dissolved his connection with the Mere- 
diths, in the most honorable manner, Franklin, with a 
clear conscience and freshened hopes, no longer hesita- 
ted to avail himself of the generous proffers of Coleman 
and Grace. That he might, however, be impartial in 
his obligations and gratitude, and not burden either of his 
two friends more heavily than his real exigences honestly 
required, he took from each of them a moiety of the whole 
Bum he needed. He then proceeded at once to pay off 
all the debts of the partnership, and publish the proper 
legal notice of its dissolution ; at the same time announ- 
cing that he should continue the business of the late firm 
by himself alone and on his own sole account. This affair 
was consummated in the summer of 1730, the notice of 
dissolution of the partnership, as published in his paper, 
bearing date the 14th of July in that year. 

Franklin had now entered the latter half of his twen- 



166 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ty-fifth year ; and events soon contributed to enhance 
the importance of his position, and to assign him a more 
important and influential part to act in the community. 

The restrictions imposed by the mother-country upon 
the commerce, navigation, and manufactures of her 
American colonies, confined the industry of the great 
body of the colonial population almost exclusively to 
agriculture ; that is, to the production of food, and of 
raw materials to be manufactured in England ; thus pre- 
venting that varied employment of capital and labor, and 
that diversity of occupations, which are the natural re- 
sults of the unobstructed progress of society, and indis- 
pensable to the completeness of its organization ; which 
are, also, equally indispensable to any considerable ex- 
tension of either external or internal trade ; and the 
prosecution of which, in a large way, for the purpose of 
commercial exchange and sale, occasions the chief de- 
mand for money and gives it most of its practical social 
value; which, in fine, are necessary to the universal and 
gainful activity of an intelligent, industrious, and enter- 
prising people, and their advancement in civilization. 

As one of the consequences of this selfish and monop- 
olizing policy of the mother-country, the colonies, cut 
off from the benefits of some of their most important 
natural advantages, suffered greatly in their business, 
and particularly from a much too scanty supply of cir- 
culating medium ; hard-money, for a long time the only 
currency in use, being rendered very injuriously scarce. 

To remedy this last-named evil as well as circum- 
stances permitted, the colonial legislatures, one after an- 
other, resorted to paper-money in that form so well 
known in the colonial and revolutionary history of the 
country, as " bills of credit ;" deriving their appellation 
from the fact that they depended for their value on the 
credit of the government issuing them. To sustain that 



PAPER MONEY. 167 

credit, however, the proceeds of specific taxes, or other 
public funds, were pledged for the redemption of the 
bills, which were put into circulation, partly in the way 
of payments made by government, but chiefly in the 
shape of loans to individuals, at a moderate rate of inter- 
est, and to be repaid in small annual instalments ; the 
loans being usually secured by mortgages on real es- 
tate. In many cases, moreover, the bills were made a 
legal tender not only for the payment of dues to the gov- 
ernment, but also in all private transactions. 

The first issue of this kind of currency in Pennsyl- 
vania, was made in the year 1723, under an act of the 
provincial assembly passed in the preceding year, while 
Sir William Keith was yet governor. Depreciation was 
the chief danger to which such a currency was exposed ; 
and as that danger was believed most likely to be incur- 
red by an excessive issue, that is, by issuing an amount 
exceeding the real wants of the regular business and le- 
gitimate undertakings of the community, the assembly 
commenced cautiously, the amount of their first issue 
being limited to fifteen thousand pounds. Of this sum 
no part could be loaned but upon a mortgage of unin- 
cumbered land of twice the value of the loan, or upon 
ample pledges of plate actually deposited in the loan- 
ofiice ; the rate of interest was fixed at five per cent, to 
be paid yearly, together with an instalment of one eighth 
of the principal ; the bills were made a legal tender in 
all cases, under the penalty of forfeiting the debt, or the 
particular commodity, for which they might be offered 
in payment ; and still more effectually to maintain their 
value equal to that of gold and silver, penalties were 
enacted against any bargain, or sale, for a less sum in 
coin than in bills. 

These provisions accomplished their object, and the 
business of the province soon manifested, by its exteu- 



168 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

sion and activity, the ^iieficial influence of this aug- 
mentation of the circulating medium. The testimony 
of Franklin on this point is explicit and conclusive. He 
first went to Philadelphia just about the time this first 
issue of paper-money was made ; and the subject was 
of such deep concern to the whole community and so 
universally the principal topic of conversation, that it 
took strong hold of his mind. By the time its practical 
operation had become well developed, the Junto was or- 
ganized, and this subject was elaborately discussed in 
that club, particularly by Franklin, who took his stand 
in favor of this currency, not for the sake of argument, 
but because he was thoroughly convinced of its utility, 
from his own observation of the increase of trade, em- 
ployment, and population, produced by the issue of 
1723. 

When he first walked about Philadelphia, eating his 
roll of bread, (to use for the most part his own words,) 
he saw many a house in the principal streets, with bills 

" to let" — on their doors ; and so frequent were these 

notices, that they "made him think the inhabitants of the 
city were one after another deserting it;" whereas, in a 
few years under the impulse imparted to business by a 
more plentiful circulating medium, he " saw the old 
houses all occupied and many new ones building." 

The act authorizing this first issue of bills of credit 
in Pennsylvania, provided, it should be remembered, 
that the loans under it should be repaid in eight annual 
instalments ; and before Franklin closed accounts with 
the Merediths, the period limited for calling in and ex- 
tinguishing these bills, was approaching so near its ter- 
mination, that the public attention had again become 
fixed upon the subject, and its importance had once more 
made it the leading topic of discussion throughout the 
province. 



BENEFIT OP THE PAPER-MONEY. 169 

The effects of this first trial, now before the eyes of 
all, were so evidently and generally beneficial, that the 
laboring classes, the men of small means and compara- 
tively moderate possessions, who needed more or less 
credit, and whose industry, enterprise, and knowledge 
of business, enabled them to make an advantageous use 
of credit, were everywhere, in town and country, strong- 
ly in favor of the policy, which had furnished a more 
plentiful supply of the means of buying and selling, of 
giving employment to labor, of extending the cultiva- 
tion of the land, augmenting the population, and bring- 
ing out the resources of the province ; and all these 
classes of people, in view of the near approach of the time 
fixed for the withdrawal of those means, had begun to 
call, with great and growing earnestness, for the meas- 
ures necessary, not only to prevent the serious injury 
which would result from the sudden withdrawal of the 
bills then in circulation, but for another and a somewhat 
larger issue, to meet the wants of the augmented busi- 
ness of the province, and to aid in still further develop- 
ing its resources, and giving enterprise a still wider 
range. 

While the great body of the people, however, were 
thus calling for a further supply of that which they had 
found so useful, the capitalists and men of wealth gen- 
erally, either because, with a scanty currency, they would 
have a fuller control of the whole amount, or for other 
reasons, opposed the whole paper-money policy. They 
insisted that no legislative provisions and no condition 
of the community could prevent the depreciation of 
these bills ; and that the inevitable operation of such a 
currency, when made a lawful tender in payment, either 
of debts already due, or of sums to accrue on future 
contracts and payable at a subsequent day, would be 
greatly injurious to creditors, because, in the prog- 
15 



170 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ress of depreciation, tlie sums actually paid would be 
of less and less value, as compared with coin, though 
nominally equal. 

At this juncture Franklin discussed this subject, in a 
pamphlet, entitled, " A Modest Inquiry into the Nature 
and Necessity of a Paper Currency." Though publish- 
ed anonymously, the authorship of the pamphlet was no 
secret ; and being widely circulated, it exerted a con- 
trolling influence on public opinion. Aside from his oc- 
casional newspaper paragraphs, this was his first sys- 
tematic discussion of any important question of public 
policy ; and it is now extant among his writings. It is 
admirable for the fullness of knowledge, ability, and ma- 
turity of thought, which it displays ; aud considered as 
the production of a young mechanic in his twenty-fourth 
year, it is a very remarkable performance. 

Some of the views presented in this paper are now 
deemed erroneous, and some of its reasonings unsound. 
Yet, writers of distinguished ability even among those 
who hold different opinions on some points, admit that 
it also contains piinciples of great importance, which 
have stood the test of reason and experience, and some 
of which, though more fully developed and illustrated 
with more detail by later writers, have never been more 
distinctly recognised, or more clearly stated. It should 
be also observed, that in regard to some of the views 
which have been declared erroneous by one class of wri- 
ters, that others perhaps equally able w^ould pronounce 
a different judgment ; while it is conceded on all hands, 
that the performance in question displays unusual power 
of philosophical analysis, with a profound and clear in- 
sight into the complex and difficult subject of which it 
treats ; and that no one even of those have been accus- 
tomed to such investigations, can read this ** Inquiry," 
without finding his ideas simplified and rendered more 



PAMPHLET ON PAPEPv-MONEY. 171 

definite on some points, and seeing the whole subject in 
a clearer light. 

Franklin was all the better prepared for handling this 
subject, and presenting it to the public with clearaess 
and force, by his having taken a leading part in the dis- 
cussion of it in the Junto. Referring to the pamphlet, 
in his autobiography, he states that the people generally 
received it with favor, while the rich men disliked it, as 
it strengthened the call for another issue of paper- 
money ; but the latter class having none among them 
able to answer it, their opposition to the proposed meas- 
ure relaxed, so that at the next session of the assembly 
it was carried by a handsome majority. 

The importance of Franklin's service in this matter 
was felt by the majority; and this fact, together with the 
natural desire to encourage so efficient a writer to em- 
ploy his pen on subjects of public interest, with the fur- 
ther consideration that the work done at his press was 
always well done, induced the majority of the assembly 
to give him the printing of the new bills to be issued ; 
" a profitable job," says he, *' and a great help to me," 
as well as ** another advantage gained by being able to 
write." 

Continued experience so clearly demonstrated the be- 
neficent operation of this paper-money, guarded as it was 
against depreciation, that the principles on which it was 
issued were subsequently, as he states, but little dispu- 
ted ; and the amount, augmented in several successive 
issues, rose at last, in 1739, to eighty thousand pounds ; 
** trade, building, and inhabitants, all the while increas- 
ing." Subsequent reflection, however, further enlight- 
ened by a larger and more varied observation, induced 
him to add to his own account of the foregoing proceed- 
ings, his ultimate conviction " that there are limits" to 
the amount of such a currency, beyond which it may 



172 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

prove injurious to tlio^very interests, to which, when 
it is properly restricted and regulated, it can be rendered 
so advantageous. 

It seems but just to add that so far as this policy was 
carried in Pennsylvania, it appears pretty clearly to have 
proved on the whole very beneficial in its direct influ- 
ence on the internal interests of the province ; that it 
was only when money was wanted for foreign remit- 
tances, that the bills of this local currency were per- 
ceived to be somewhat loss valuable than gold and sil- 
ver ; though the discount upon them, even in such cases, 
was not large, and was by no means equal to the coun- 
terbalancing benefits which resulted from the increased 
activity their circulation imparted to trade, and the im- 
pulse they gave to the general prosperity of the people. 

By such honorable means as have been indicated, 
Franklin was now thriving both in business and reputa- 
tion. Not long after the printing of the new bills for 
Pennsylvania, he was employed to print the bills of a 
similar issue at Newcastle, for "The Three Lower 
Counties," as Delaware was then called. For this, which 
he regarded as another beneficial contract, " small 
things," as he expresses it, *' appearing great to those 
in small circumstances," he was indebted to his distin- 
guished friend, Hamilton, who also procured for him the 
printing of the journals and laws of the colonial govern- 
ment of Delaware, which he retained as long as he con- 
tinued in the printing business. 

Further to exemplify Franklin's assiduous industry in 
the management of his business, and especially his me- 
chanical ingenuity and resource, it is but just to state 
that in the early part of his career, when he had yet but 
little cash to spare, any deficiency in the implements and 
apparatus of his trade was usually supplied by him- 
self. Thus he contrived for himself the apparatus for 



YELLOW WILLOW — GYPSUM. ^"^^ 

casting leaden types; executed cuts in wood of various 
ornaments to embellish what the printers call job-work 
made printer's ink; engraved vignettes on copper, and 
made his own press for taking impressions from such 

^'Tn'other incident is related of him, which is not only 
interesting in itself, but testifies to the vigilance of his ob- 
servation'and his habit of turning whatever he obsei^ed 
to some useful account. It was he, who, as rela ed m 
Watson's Annals of Philadelphia, first propagated in 
this country the yellota willoto, now so comm.m among 
u A willow basket, in which he had received some 
package from abroad, having been thrown aside upon 
Cist 'ground, had sprouted. Franklin seeing this^ 
pla,ited°some cuttings of the ^P^'-S .',f ;> '^f J^^ 
them it is alleged, came our yellow willow, a uselul 
p;:"' not only for wicker-work, but for protecting the 

^ti:o;tr~nt of much greater impoi.ance,may^ 
properly enough introduced in this connection U is le 
fated b Dr. S^rks, on the authority of the distinguish- 
edFrench chemist, Chaptal; audit shows that our coiin- 
try is indebted to Franklin, in the first instance, foi the 
knowledge and use of gypsu.^, as a fertilizer in agl■lcu^ 
tuie. This article having originally been brought fom 
pirs was long known only by the ^^me oi plaster of 
?:;• and Clfaptal, who rendered incalculable service^o 
agriculture by applying chemical — « j^ J;;"^, 
pfovement, in his work on Agr^cultural Chcmutry, 
nuoted bv Dr. Sparks, has the following passage :-- 
' 'Is thifcelebrated philosopher," says Chaptal refei-- 
rinet F auklin, "wished that the effects of this manure 
Zlids^Hke th<: ga.e of cultivators, he wi.^ .n great 
letters formed by the use of the ground Pl-^''-"\e „ 
of clover lying upon the great road: This has 



174 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

plastered.' The prodigiWis vegetation which was devel- 
oped ill the plastered portion, led him to adopt this meth- 
od. A'^olumes upon the excellency of plaster would not 
have produced so speedy a revolution." 

The mode thus chosen for recommending the new ma- 
nure, by its unequivocal, practical directness and sim- 
plicity, was highly characteristic of Franklin ; and the 
whole statement will enhance the popular respect and 
affection for his memory, by bringing home to general 
recognition what has been but little known. 

About the time when Franklin had finished the print- 
ing of the Delaware bills, he added to his printing busi- 
ness that of a stationer ; and he helped his custom by 
keeping, besides the usual articles of stationery, a con- 
stant supply of blank forms commonly used in convey- 
ancing, and in legal proceedings in the courts of justice. 
In preparing these forms he was assisted by his fi'iend 
Breintnall, who was himself a conveyancer; and being 
well arranged and carefully printed, their neatness and 
accuracy, much beyond anything previously furnished in 
that way, secured the custom of all who had occasion to 
use them. His assortment of the usual articles of sta- 
tionery was also full, and thereto was added an ample 
supply of school-books, and other books for children. It 
is worth stating, too, as indicative of the impression he 
made on those with whom he associated, that one of the 
journeymen now in his employ, was a man with whom 
he had become acquainted in the London printing- 
offices, by the name of Whitmarsh, who, on arriving at 
Philadelphia, had gone at once to Franklin, and proved 
to be a diligent workman, and a worthy man. He had, 
also, as an indented apprentice, a young son of that 
Aquila Rose, whose death left the opening for employ- 
ment, which was the particular inducement that led 
Franklin first to Philadelphia, and whose elegy furnished 



HIS DEVOTION TO HIS BUSINESS. 175 

him with some of his first earnings there, in working it 
off at the press, when it had been composed in type by 
the eccentric Keimer. 

Persevering industry and personal attention to his 
business, with civil deportment, and constant care that 
whatever work he was employed to do, should be done 
promptly and in a neat, thorough, and workmanlike man- 
ner, united to the public spirit he had evinced, and his 
talents as a writer, were now producing for him their 
legitimate results ; and his thrift enabled him to com- 
mence paying off' the debt he had incurred in setting up 
his printing-office. His habits and course of life at this 
period, are well described in the following passage from 
his own pen : — 

** In order to secure my credit and character as a trades- 
man," says he, " I took care not only to be in reality indus- 
trious and frugal, but to avoid even appearances to the 
contrary. I dressed plain, and was seen at no places of 
idle diversion. I never went out a fishing, or shooting. 
A book, indeed, sometimes enticed me from my work ; 
but that was seldom, was private, and gave no scandal ; 
and to show that 1 was not above my business, I some- 
times brought home the paper I purchased at the stores, 
through the streets on a wheel-barrow. Thus, being 
esteemed an industrious, thriving young man, and pay- 
ing duly for what I bought, the merchants who imported 
stationery solicited my custom ; others proposed supply- 
ing me with books, and I went on prosperously." 



176 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

RIVALS IN TRADE FRUITLESS ATTEMPT AT MATCH-MA- 
KING HE MARRIES MISS READ LIBRARIES STUD- 
IES PROSPECTS. 

While Franklin was thus prospering in business, and 
growing in the esteem of the community, Keimer, his 
former employer, was daily losing both custom and cred- 
it; and being compelled before long to sell out his whole 
stock in trade, to meet the demands of his creditors, he 
went off to Barbadoes, in the West Indies, where, after 
several years of poverty, he died in great indigence. 

David Harry, who has already been mentioned as an 
apprentice to Keimer, but who had in fact been taught 
his trade by Franklin while working in Keimer's office, 
was the person who bought out his former master, and 
undertook to carry on the same business himself. Har 
ry's friends were persons of considerable property and 
influence ; and when he commenced business on his 
own account, Franklin felt no little solicitude lest his owii 
prosperity should be seriously checked by one who seem- 
ed likely to be a powerful rival. To avoid any unfriend- 
ly competition, which could only prove injurious to both, 
he proposed to Harry to form a partnership. This pro- 
posal, however, says Franklin, "he, fortunately for me, 
rejected with scorn." Harry's foolish pride, expen- 
sive habits, indulgence in amusements, and consequent 
neglect of business, soon involved him in debt; his cus- 
tomers quit him, and he pretty soon followed Keimer to 



ATTEMPT AT MATCH-MAKING. 177 

Barbadoes, taking along with liim his printing appa- 
ratus. " There," says Franklin, " the apprentice em- 
ployed his former master as a journeyman. They often 
quarrelled; Harry went continually behindhand; and 
at length was obhged to sell his types and return to coun- 
try-work in Pennsylvania.'* 

Thus ended the career of another young man, whose 
means and opportunity for the achievement of success 
in business and a respectable standing in society, were 
so ample, but were forfeited by his follies and his vices. 
These events left in Philadelphia only two printing- 
offices, Bradford's and Franklin's. But Bradford was 
in very easy circumstances; he employed only a few 
roving journeymen ; did but little business, and made 
no efifort to increase it. Still, as he was the postmaster 
of the city, it was taken for granted that his means both 
of obtaining news and circulating advertisements, must 
be the best ; and this idea gave him some advantage 
over his competitor, especially as he had ordered his 
post-riders not to carry any of that competitor's papers. 
This unneighborly conduct of Bradford gave Franklin 
great disgust ; and he considered it so unfair and mean- 
spirited, that afterward, during the long period for 
which he had the management of the same postoffice, 
he never copied so unworthy an example. 

Franklin's printing-office was on the second floor of 
his own house, and under it, on the first floor, was his 
stationer's shop, one side of which, the apartment being 
pretty large, was occupied as a glazier's shop, by 
Thomas Godfrey, who, with his family, lived in the same 
house, and with whom Franklin still continued to board. 
The intimacy which grew out of these circumstances 
led Mrs. Godfrey to plan a match between Franklin and 
one of her young relatives. For this purpose she made 
opportunities to bring them frequently together, and the 



178 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

consequence was, that Franklin soon commenced court- 
ship in earnest ; especially as the young woman, accord- 
ing to his own testimony, was " very deserving." Her 
parents, also, favored the courtship by " continual invi- 
tations to supper," and leaving the young people to each 
other's society. 

When, in due time, it became proper that all the par- 
ties concerned should come to a definite understanding 
on this subject, Mrs. Godfrey was employed as the nego- 
tiator. Through her Franklin gave the parents distinct- 
ly to understand that if he married their daughter, he 
must receive with her a sum sufficient to pay off the rem- 
nant of debt, estimated by him at a hundred pounds, 
which he still owed for his establishment. To this mes- 
sage they sent back for answer that they had no such 
amount of money to spare ; upon which Franklin sug- 
gested that they might mortgage their house and lot to 
the loan-office. 

On receiving this suggestion, the parents took some 
days to consider the expediency of the match, in a more 
business-like way ; they made inquiries of Bradford re- 
specting the profits and general character, safety and 
prospects of the printer's trade; and when they had 
obtained all the information they deemed necessary on 
these points, they replied that printing, as they were 
told, was not a productive trade; that its materials were 
not only expensive, but necessarily subject to great wear 
and tear, and that fresh supplies were, therefore, needed 
at short intervals ; that two printers, Keimer and Har- 
ry, had recently become bankrupt in the business, and 
that Franklin was himself likely soon to make the third. 
The result was, that they forbid Franklin's visits to their 
house, and shut up their daughter. 

On this final reply from the parents Franklin makes 
the following comment: " Whether this was," says he, 



THE ATTEMPTED MATCH FAILS. 179 

"a real change of sentiment, or only an artifice, on the 
supposition of our being too far engaged in affection to 
retract, and that therefore we should steal a marriage, 
which would leave them at liberty to give or withhold 
what they pleased, I know not. But I suspected the 
motive, resented it, and went no more." 

The conduct of the parents, as presented in the fore- 
going statement to the mind of an uninterested reader, 
even at this distance of time, certainly affords some rea- 
son for Franklin's suspicion ; and that reason was 
strengthened, in his opinion, at least, by the account, 
which Mrs. Godfrey subsequently gave him, of the re- 
turn of the parents to more friendly views, upon the 
strength of which she urged him to renew his visits to 
the young w^oman. He, however, avowed his fixed de- 
termination to have no further intercourse with those 
people. This gave such offence to the Godfreys, thai 
they quit Franklin's house, leaving it wholly to himself; 
and he thereupon "resolved to take no more inmates." 

Though Mrs. Godfrey's attempt at match-making fail- 
ed of its particular object, yet it served to turn Frank- 
lin's thoughts to the subject of marriage; and led him 
to seek acquaintance with other families. It was not 
long, however, before this kind of intercourse disclosed 
to him a very prevalent impression unfavorable to his 
trade, as a means of accumulating property and giving 
a family a respectable position in society ; and that he 
** was not to expect money with a wife," unless it should 
be found requisite by way of compensation for lack of 
other attractions. But, situated as he was, the tempta- 
tions to irregular habits, and to pernicious as well as 
costly pleasures, were numerous and strong ; and he felt 
his danger. 

The most neighborly intercourse had been maintained 
between himself and the family of the Reads, whose at- 



180 LIFE <3F BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

tachment to him had suffered no abatement, notwithstand- 
ing the circumstances which had prevented his union with 
the dausfhter. He stood, in fact, on the most intimate 
footing with them. They were fond of his society, cher- 
ished his friendship, frequently conferred with him in the 
most confidential manner concerning their affairs, and he 
was gratified whenever he could render them a service. 

Miss Read's position, meanwhile, was a very annoying 
one. Though her marriage with the worthless Rogers, 
was believed void, on the ground that he had, as was con- 
fidently alleged, another wife living at the time in Eng- 
land, yet the impediments in the way of finding out the 
woman and procuring proof of the fact, in consequence 
of the distance and the tardiness of communication be- 
tween the two countries, made it exceedingly difficult to 
show the invalidity of that marriage judicially; and 
though it was reported that Rogers himself had died 
within a few years after he absconded from Philadel- 
phia, yet that also needed proof, or at least such a lapse 
of time without knowledge of him, as would raise a le- 
gal presumption of the fact. 

These circumstances, connected with the disappoint- 
ment of her first affection and hope, weighed heavily on 
the spirits of Miss Read, who lost her native cheerful- 
ness and shunned society ; and as Franklin reflected on 
what he saw, he could not escape some feeling of self- 
reproach for his own conduct, as having indirectly con- 
tributed, in some degree at least, to embitter and sadden 
the condition of one, for whom he cherished the sin- 
cerest esteem. On this subject he makes the following 
frank and honest confession : — 

" I considered my giddiness and inconstancy when in 
London," says he, ** as in a great degree the cause of 
her unhappiness ; though her mother was good enough 
to think the fault more her own than mine ; as she had 



HE MARRIES MISS READ. 181 

prevented our marrying before I went thither, and had 
persuaded the other match in my absence." 

The two young people, however, meeting, as they did 
almost daily, in the intimate and confidential intercourse 
already described, soon felt their affection for each other 
reviving ; and none the less readily and warmly, for the 
dejection and sadness of the one, and the commisera- 
ting sympathy of the other. Indeed, no state of feeling 
in the two parties respectively, could be imagined more 
certain to revive a former love, or kindle a new one ; 
and as the allegations respecting the former marriage 
aliQ the death of Rogers, received the general credence, 
they determined at length to marry. The marriage 
took place on the 1st of September, 1730. Nothing con- 
nected with the former marriage ever occurred, to dis- 
turb the tranquillity of this union ; and Franklin closes 
his relation of this interesting and fortunate transaction, 
by testifying, as a tribute to the worth of his bride, that 
" she proved to be a good and faithful help-mate, and as- 
sisted him much by attending to the shop ;" that they 
" throve together, and ever mutually endeavored to make 
each other happy;" finally adding, in reference to his 
inconstancy to her, while he was in London : *' Thus I 
corrected that great erratum as well as I could." 

While events so interesting to him, in his private re- 
lations, were thus taking place, Franklin did not neglect 
to avail himself of such means of improvement in knowl- 
edge and mental discipline as he could command, and 
business allowed him opportunity to make use of. He 
continued to be an active and efficient member of the 
Junto; and as the meetings of that club had been trans- 
ferred from the tavern, where they were at first held, to 
a room liberally furnished for the purpose by Robert 
Grace, the greater privacy and security of this arrange- 
ment led Franklin to propose that, inasmuch as they had 

16 



182 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

frequent occasion, in tli^ discussions, to refer to the 
books they respectively possessed, they should make 
common stock of them by depositing them in the club- 
room. 

This proposal was adopted. On bringing their sev- 
eral parcels together, however, the collection was found 
considerably less than had been anticipated ; and the in- 
jury which befell the books for the want of proper care, 
the readiness with which the members of a small club 
could borrow of each other, and the advantages, in their 
circumstances and for their purposes, of having such 
books as they severally possessed always at hand, over- 
balanced the benefits of so small a collection, and in- 
duced them, at the end of a twelvemonth or thereabouts, 
to break up the deposite. 

This expeiiment, nevertheless, showed that such col- 
lections might be rendered eminently useful, if made on 
a suitable scale and placed under judicious regulations. 
A library of sufficient extent to make it worth while to 
provide for the proper custody and care of the books, 
would not only be exceedingly useful to persons already 
addicted to reading, or engaged in investigations, which 
could not be prosecuted with satisfaction, or success, 
without the aid of many books ; but it might also be ren- 
dered still more generally beneficial to society, by pla* 
cing the means of knowledge within convienient reach 
even of persons in the narrowest circumstances ; and by 
exciting a love of reading, where it did not already exist, 
especially among the younger members of the commu- 
nity, who might be thus led to substitute the gi-atifica- 
tion and benefit to be derived fi'om books, in place of 
idle, unprofitable, and pernicious amusements. 

Considerations of this kind took strong hold of Frank- 
lin's mind ; and their influence was much augmented by 
observing the destitution of the community about him, 



HE FOUNDS A LIBRARY. 



183 



in relation to this matter. When he established himself 
in Philadelphia, there was not, as he states, " a good 
bookseller's shop anywhere in the colonies south of Bos- 
ton. The printers in New York and Philadelphia were 
indeed stationers, but they sold only paper, almanacs, 
ballads, and a few common school-books. Those who 
loved reading were obliged to send for their books to 
England." 

In this dearth of the means of knowledge, Franklin 
set about laying the foundation of a library, on the basis 
of a general subscription. For this purpose he drew 
up a plan, with provisions for such a management of the 
proposed library, as he thought would diffuse its bene- 
fits most widely, while it also insured a proper care of 
the books ; and then procured Charles Brockden, " a 
skilful conveyancer," to connect therewith the terms of 
subscription in such legal form as would constitute a 
valid contract. Forty shillings were to be paid down 
by each subscriber, to make the first purchases ; and ten 
shillings yearly thereafter, for the annual increase of the 
library. Moderate as these terms were, however, '* so 
few," says Franklin, " were the readers at that time in 
Philadelphia," and most of them " so poor," that he 
'« was not able, with great industry, to find more than 
fifty" subscribers, in the outset, and they were " mostly 
young tradesmen." 

The fifty subscriptions of forty shillings amounted to 
one hundred pounds, to be paid, of course, in the local 
currency. The value of the currency as compared with 
silver coin is not stated. At the rate of eight shillings 
to the dollar, (the ultimate rate in New York,) the hun- 
dred pounds would be only two hundred and fifty dol- 
lars ; but as the Pennsylvania currency did not finally 
fall below the rate of seven shillings and sixpence, and 
was, at the time now spoken of, much nearer _^ar, the 



184 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

amount in dollars was smnewhat more than the number 
mentioned. ** With this little fund," says Franklin, 
** we began. The books were imported ; the library- 
was opened one day in the week for lending them to 
subscribers, on their promissory notes to j^ay double 
the value, if not duly returned. The institution soon 
manifested its utility, was imitated in other towns, and in 
other provinces. The libraries were augmented by do- 
nations ; reading became fashionable ; and our people, 
having no public amusements to divert their attention, 
became better acquainted with books, and in a few 
years were observed by strangers to be better instructed 
and more intelligent than people of the same rank gen- 
erally in other countries." 

The articles of subscription, dated on the 1st of July, 
1731, bound the signers and their legal representatives 
for the term of fifty years ; but in 1742 they were super- 
seded by a charter from the proprietaries of the prov- 
ince, converting the library association into a permanent 
corporation, with Franklin at its head. 

The library thus founded now contains one of the 
most extensive and valuable collections of books in this 
country ; and its principal founder had the satisfaction, 
in 1789, fifty-eight years after its origin, and about eight 
months before his death, to see the foundation laid of the 
spacious edifice, designed expressly for it, which it still 
occupies. At the southeast angle of this edifice, on a 
stone prepared for the purpose at the suggestion of 
Franklin, is an inscription, written by him, (except the 
words relating to himself, inserted by another hand,) and 
purporting, beside the dates, to be **in honor of the 
Philadelphia youth, then chiefly artificers," who " cheer- 
fully, at the instance of Benjamin Franklin, one of their 
number, instituted the Philadelphia Libraiy." The 
front of the building is adorned with a statue of Frank- 



A USEFUL LESSON. 185 

lin in marble, executed in Italy, at the expense of Wil- 
liam Bingham, an opulent citizen of Philadelphia. 

Before leaving this subject it would be wrong to omit 
recording here a lesson, which Franklin learned while 
engaged in recommending the library project, and in 
soliciting subscriptions for it. The lesson, though it is 
one of no little practical value, in relation both to self- 
discipline and to the successful persuasion of others, is 
also one, which the self-esteem of most of us renders it 
by no means easy to practise. Franklin has left this 
lesson behind him in the following passage : — 

" The objections and reluctances I met with," says 
he, ** in soliciting subscriptions, made me soon feel the 
impropriety of presenting one's self as the projyosej- of 
any useful project, which might be supposed to raise 
one's reputation, in the smallest degree, above that of 
one's neighbors, when one has need of their assistance 
to accomplish that project. I therefore put myself, as 
much as I could, out of sight, and stated it as a scheme 
of a number of friends, who had requested me to go 
about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of 
reading. In this way my affair went on more smoothly, 
and I ever after practised it on such occasions; and 
from my frequent successes can heartily recommend it. 
The present little sacrifice of your vanity will afterward 
be amply repaid. If it remains awhile uncertain to 
whom the merit belongs, some one more vain than your- 
self may be encouraged to claim it, and the?i even envy 
will be disposed to do you justice, by plucking those as- 
sumed feathers and restoring them to their right owner." 
This, assuredly, is one of the modes, in which a man 
may lawfully apply the injunction to '* be wise as the 
serpent, and harmless as the dove." 

The new library being opened, no one made more 
faithful use of it than Franklin. To avail himself most 

16* 



18G LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

successfully of its advaiiH^es he systematically devoted 
a portion of every day to study, and eagerly strove to 
supply, as fully as he could, his deficiencies in those 
higher parts of learning, to which the " bookish inclina- 
tion" of his boyhood seemed then to entitle him, but 
which the scantiness of his father's means constrained 
him in his youth to forego. He squandered none even 
of the fragments of his time, in taverns, or other resorts 
of the frivolous and idle. His personal attendance upon 
his business gave him all the bodily exercise needful to 
health ; and his studies, to wliich he went with a relish 
rendered all the keener by the labors of the day, be- 
came his highest and most coveted enjoyment. 

Besides the vigilance and industry constantly demand- 
ed to protect and extend his business, in the midst of a 
jealous competition, and to enable him to meet the pay- 
ments yet due for his establishment, he now had a family 
for which it was his duty to provide not merely subsist- 
ence, but instruction, an honest training, and a respecta- 
ble position in society. These considerations, however, 
never depressed his spirits, or operated as discourage- 
ments. On the contrary, so far from enfeebling him, 
they only acted as invigorating incitements to his man- 
ly and hopeful nature; and as he found his means 
steadily increasing, and saw the confidence and esteem 
of the community toward him dai'ly extending, the con- 
sciousness of successful effort and justly appreciated 
character, must have rendered this period one of the 
very happiest of his life. 

In his own account of this period, Franklin remarks 
that his father had frequently repeated to him, when a 
boy, the saying of Solomon — " Seest thou a man dili- 
gent in his calling, he shall stand before kings" — and 
that this had led him to consider industry as a means of 
gaining wealth and distinction. This gave him courage ; 



i 



DOMESTIC CONCORD. 187 

and though he had, at the time, no anticipation of the 
literal verification of the proverb in his own case, yet 
he did, in fact, verify it as fully, probably, as any person 
that ever lived, of an equally humble origin; for in the 
course of his long career he stood before^«;e kings, with 
one of whom, the king of Denmark, he sat at dinner, 
while that monarch was on a visit at Paris, during Frank- 
lin's residence there as the diplomatic representative of 
his country — a greater sovereignty than Denmark. 

Time soon showed Franklin how great a boon was 
his wife, and how material was her co-operation, in se- 
curing prosperity. Quoting the old proverb — "He 
that would thrive must ask his wife" — he congratulates 
himself on having ** one as much disposed to industry 
and frugality," as he was ; and in his business, which, 
more than most other occupations, furnishes employment 
well suited to females, " she cheerfully assisted in fold- 
ing and stitching pamphlets, in tending shop," and in all 
the various indoor details of their trade. 

Their household affairs, also, were placed on a ration- 
al and economical footing, suited to their means, and 
managed with careful frugality, yet without foregoing a 
single real comfort. " We kept," says Franklin, " no idle 
servants; our table was plain and simple ; and our furni- 
ture of the cheapest." His own breakfast long consisted 
merely of "bread and milk, (no tea,) taken from a two- 
penny earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon." But, 
as he smilingly adds, " mark how luxury will enter fam- 
ilies, and make progress in spite of principle;" for, go- 
ing one morning to his favorite breakfast, he unexpect- 
edly "found it in a China bowl with a spoon of silver!" 
His wife, it appears, had prepared this amiable surprise 
for him, at her own cost, as a token of her affection ; and 
he playfully remarks that " she had no other excuse, or 
apology, to make, but that she thought her husband de- 



188 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

served a silver spoon Bi0t a China bowl, as well as any 
of his neighbors." These were the first articles of plate 
and China in the family, and they gradually accumula- 
ted to the amount finally of several hundred pounds. 

This is a 23leasing picture, not merely of frugality and 
thrift, but of cheerful diligence and domestic concord ; 
and if oftener copied in these days of greater seeming 
affluence, would secure to many an ambitious young 
household, the respect, confidence, success, and happi- 
ness, they so eagerly desire, but so frequently miss. And 
the frugality which Franklin practised, as well as taught, 
was not the mean parsimony of a niggard disposition. 
This has been sometimes imputed to him ; but such an 
imputation does him the grossest injustice. Not to in- 
sist on the readiness with which he put his hand into 
pocket for casual alms, or even the extent to which, more 
generous than discreet, he supplied the unworthy neces- 
sities of Collins and Ralph, even to his own inconveni- 
ence, when he had nothing but the earnings of his daily 
labor to bestow, and when the prospect of repayment 
was far too hopeless to influence him in any degree — 
to say nothing of these instances, the ungrudging liber- 
ality with which he provided for his family, as his means 
accumulated ; his bounty, through life, to his poorer rela- 
tives ; and the uncalculating and patriotic promptitude, 
with which he aided the public service with his credit 
and money both, should for ever silence all imputationo 
of the kind mentioned. 

No : Franklin's frugality proceeded from a high sense 
of duty. It was the legitimate fruit and conclusive 
proof of his honesty, and of a just sentiment of self-re- 
spect and manly independence. Twenty-five years old, 
not yet free of debt, and with a family to provide for, 
he was pursuing an occupation which was not capable 
of producing large results in short periods, or by fortu- 



REASONS OF HIS FRUGALITY. 189 

nate adventures, but yielded its gains only by small de- 
grees, to steady diligence and patient perseverance ; 
and in which, while two persons failed before his eyes, 
he still had competitors, and could not safely count upon 
employment more than enough, at best, for a very mod- 
erate and slow accumulation beyond the current expenses 
of a decent livelihood. 

Frugality, and even parsimony, when practised for 
such reasons, should always be held in honor; and that 
such were the true motives of Franklin's frugality, is 
fully confirmed by some rules, which, about this time, he 
drew up for his guidance. Among these rules, some of 
which bound him to the strictest veracity and sincerity 
on all occasions, and others to the habitual avoidance of 
all censorious and uncharitable speech concerning other 
people, there are two which bear directly on the point 
under consideration. In one of these, he states the ne- 
cessity of his being ** extremely frugal" till his debt was 
paid ; and the other testifies to his good sense by re- 
solving to attend closely to whatever he might under- 
take, and not permit his mind to be "diverted from his 
business, by any foolish project of growing suddenly 
rich;'''' inasmuch as "industry and patience are the 
surest means of plenty." 

In connection with this view of Franklin's domestic 
condition, at the commencement of house-keeping, as at 
the opening of a new act in the drama of life, he has 
left in his autobiography a characteristically frank and 
honest account of his religious and moral sentiments and 
habits ; and as it is somewhat more explicit, as well as 
less eccentric in some respects, than the view presented 
in the paper entitled, " Articles of Belief and Acts of Re- 
ligion," already noticed, the substance of this account is 
here given. 

His parents were Calvinists, and while he remained 



190 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

with them, he was trainea accordingly. Some of their 
tenets, however, seemett to him unintelligible, or doubt- 
ful; but certain doctrines, or principles, which form the 
basis, in part at least, of every religous creed, he held 
with an unfeigned faith. " I never doubted," says he, 
" the existence of a Deity ; that he made the world and 
governed it by his providence; that the most acceptable 
service of God was the doing good to man ; that our 
souls are immortal ; and that all crimes will be punished, 
and virtue rewarded, either here, or hereafter." 

Deeming these, as he says, the essentials of every re- 
ligion, and finding them in all the creeds of the country, 
he respected them all, though in different degrees, ac- 
cording to the admixture of other doctrines having no 
tendency, as he thought, to nourish a sound morality, but 
serving rather to promote division and embitter contro- 
versy. These sentiments, joined to a belief, moreover, 
that even such religious views as seemed to him most 
mingled with error, were far more wholesome in their 
practical influence, than no acknowledgment of religious 
obligation in any form, led him to abstain from every- 
thing calculated to impair the confidence of any person 
in the value of his religious opinions, or to blunt his re- 
ligious sensibility ; and as the growing population of the 
province called for a greater number of houses for pub- 
lic worship, he never refused his contribution to the sub- 
scriptions by which they were usually erected. 

He considered public worship and the regular preach- 
ing of a settled ministry capable of being rendered emi- 
nently useful to society ; but he thought their usefulness, 
in point of fact, greatly diminished by the generally 
sectarian and polemical character of the preaching; 
and though he regularly paid a liberal yearly subscrip- 
tion to the support of the only Presbyterian clergyman 
then in Philadelphia, yet he did not often attend his 



SCHEME OF MORAL PERFECTION. 191 

meetings, for the reason just mentioned. On this ac- 
count the clergyman, with whom he lived on terms of 
uninterrupted good neighborhood, occasionally remon- 
strated with him ; and after one of these friendly admo- 
nitions Franklin was induced to attend public worship 
five Sundays in succession. But the sermons he heard 
were so exclusively occupied with controversy about 
points of dispute between different sects; and fell so far 
short, as it seemed to Franklin, of making that varied 
and beneficent use of the Scriptures, for which, as he 
thought, they were designed, and of which they are so 
capable, for the guidance of life and the elevation of 
character, that, finding himself not edified, he ceased 
further attendance uj^on the preaching of this clergyman, 
and resorted again to his private devotions, in the form 
he had some years before prepared for himself, as 
already related. His own account of this matter he 
closes with the following frank declaration : " My con- 
duct," says he, " might be blameable ; but I leave it, 
without attempting further to excuse it ; my present pur- 
pose being to relate facts, not to make apologies for 
them." 

Another remarkable event in Franklin's mental his- 
tory occurred at this stage in the progress of his opin- 
ions, and of his inner life. This was the conception of 
a -plsin for SLttsining 7noral perfection. The desire took 
possession of him " to live without committing any 
fault at any time ;" and by rigorous and vigilant self- 
discipline, to hold in check and finally overcome all the 
tendencies and incitements to moral transgression, 
" either in natural inclination, or custom, or company." 
Supposing himself to understand clearly the distinc- 
tions of right and wrong, in all cases presented to his 
moral judgment, or conscience, it seemed to him prac- 
ticable to do right in one case as certainly as in another ; 



192 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

in other words, to follow his convictions of duty, and do 
right, or avoid wrong, in all cases. 

Although Franklin had, beyond doubt, given far more 
time and earnest thought, than is usual with either the 
young or the mature, to the momentous duty of self- 
examination, yet such conceptions and desires as have 
just been mentioned, while they betoken high endow- 
ments, noble aspirations, and the upward bent of his 
moral nature, show also, we think, not only the inexpe- 
rience, but the over-confidence of a young man, and a 
self-knowledge, or perhaps more correctly, a knowledge 
of human nature, still very partial and imperfect. And 
this he soon had occasion to perceive, as he does him- 
self very candidly confess. 

" I soon found," says he, " that I had undertaken a 
task of far more difficulty than 1 had imagined. While 
my attention was taken up and my care employed in 
guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by an- 
other ; habit took advantage of inattention; inclination 
was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded at 
length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was 
our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient 
to prevent our slipping ; and that the contrary habits 
must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, 
before we can have any dependence on a steady and uni- 
form rectitude of conduct." 

Perseverance, however, and a strong tenacity of pur- 
pose, were among the most marked traits of his charac- 
ter; and instead of abandoning, in weak caprice, his 
idea of moral perfection, he determined to persist in the 
endeavor to realize at least some portion of what he 
might not be able fully to accomplish. For this pur- 
pose he drew up a schedule of the moral virtues, so di- 
gested and arranged as to include under each as a gen- 
eral head, such ideas as are clear and practical, and such 



SCHEDULE OF VIRTUES. 193 

points of conduct as are unquestionably binding on the 
conscience ; avoiding all fanciful views of moral obliga- 
tion drav^^n from fine-spun theories, and placing his sys- 
tem of positive duties on the broad and solid ground of 
common sense. 

His schedule arranged the moral t^irtues under thir- 
teen titles, or heads, w^ith a brief precept annexed to 
each, to assist his mind more promptly to recognise the 
general nature of the particular virtue, and the leading 
points of conduct embraced w^ithin its scope. This 
schedule vv^as as follows : — 

1. Temperance. — Eat not to dulness ; drink not to 
elevation. 

2. Silence. — Speak not but what may benefit others, 
or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 

3. Order. — Let all your things have their places ; let 
each part of your business have its time. 

4. Resolution. — Resolve to perform what you ought ; 
perform without fail what you resolve. 

5. Frugality. — Make no expense but to do good to 
others, or yourself; that is, waste nothing. 

6. Industry. — Lose no time ; be always employed in 
something useful ; cut off all unnecessary actions. 

7. Sincerity. — Use no hurtful deceit; think inno- 
cently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 

8. Justice. — Wrong none by doing injuries, or omit- 
ting the benefits that are your duty. 

9. Moderation. — Avoid extremes ; forbear resenting 
injuries so much as you think they deserve. 

10. Cleanliness. — Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, 
clothes, or habitation. 

11. Tranquillity. — Be not disturbed at trifles, or at 
accidents, common or unavoidable. 

12. Chastity. 

13. Humility. — Imitate Jesus, and Socrates. 

17 



194 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

His process for accomplishing this plan, was to un- 
dertake, in the outset, one virtue at a time, leaving the 
others meanwhile to his ordinary observance of them ; 
and to take them up, also, in the order in which the ac- 
quirement of one, would most facilitate the acquisition 
of another. On tfiis principle he arranged his list. He 
placed temperance first, because, although a remarkably 
temperate man, in the common acceptation of the term, 
he would cultivate that virtue in its largest and worthi- 
est sense, and because, by giving him the fullest and 
most constant command of all his faculties, it would better 
prepare him for continual watchfulness against tempta- 
tion and the force of bad habits, and for the cultivation 
of other virtues. Silence was fitly placed next, not only 
because the control of the tongue is more readily attain- 
ed, when temperance in all things has become habitual, 
but because, also, in our intercourse with others, knowl- 
edge is to be gained by listening, rather than by talk- 
ing. And thus he proceeded through the entire list, the 
arrangement of which, does great credit to his philo- 
sophical discrimination, and his apprehension of moral 
relations. 

To enable himself the better to pursue this plan of 
improvement, he framed a moral account book, in which 
he opened an account with the several virtues on his list. 
Each page was ruled with seven columns, and at the 
head of each column was placed the name of a day. 
These were crossed with thirteen lines, and at the left 
end of each was entered the name of one of the thirteen 
virtues, in the order of the list. The pages thus ruled 
were also thirteen in number, and at the head of each 
page was written the name of the virtue, which was to 
be the object of special attention for any one week. On 
each virtue-line, and in the day-column, was to be a 
mark for every infraction of that virtue, during that day. 



I 



OPENS A MORAL ACCOUNT-BOOK. 195 

When the virtue placed at the head of the page as the 
particular object of the week, showed a clean line at the 
end of the week, then he was to pass on to the special 
account with the virtue at the head of the next page. 
Thus a full course with all the virtues on the list, would 
run through thirteen weeks, making room for four such 
courses in a year. 

To this moral account-book he prefixed three mottoes, 
or inscriptions, in praise of virtue; and as they serve to 
reflect, at least a ray of light on the range of study, 
which this never-idle and much-thinking young trades- 
man had been quietly yet earnestly pursuing, we copy 
them. The first one w^as taken from the celebrated so- 
liloquy of Addison's Cato. 

" Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us — 
And that there is. all Natm-e cries aloud 
Through all her works — He must delight in virtue, 
And that which He delights in, must be happy." 

The next was from Cicero's admirable work entitled, 
" De Oflaciis" — that is, a treatise on the Moral Duties. 

"O, vitse philosophise dux! O, virtutum indagatrix 
expultrixque vitiorum ! Unus dies, bene et ex preceptis 
tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est anteponendus." * 

The third inscription was from the proverbs of Solo- 
mon, where he personifies virtue, or righteousness, under 
the name of Wisdom. 

" Length of days is in her right-hand, and in her left- 
hand riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleas- 
antness, and all her paths are peace." 

And furthermore, to use his own words, " conceiving 
God to be the fountain of wisdom," he " thought it right 

* As many of the readers for whom this book is more particularly pre- 
pared, do not read Latin, this motto may be expressed in English thus: 
" O, philosophy, guide of life, tracer of virtue and expeller of vice ! A sin- 
gle day, well spent in obedience to thy precepts, is better than a sinful im- 
mortality." 



196 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

and necessary to solicit His assistance for obtaining it." 
He, therefore, prefixed to these tables of self-examina- 
tion a short prayer, composed by himself, for daily use. 
In this he addresses God as a bountiful and good father, 
and a merciful guide, asking of him wisdom and strength 
of spirit to discern and perform his duties ; and that his 
kind offices to his fellow-creatures might be accepted 
as some return for the favors extended to himself. 

In this course of self-discipline he persevered for a 
long time with scrupulous exactness ; and though he in- 
genuously confesses that he felt surprised at the number 
of his faults, yet he declares that he was in some degree 
recompensed by seeing them gradually become less fre- 
quent. For the first few years the four cycles of thir- 
teen weeks each, were duly accomplished within the 
year, in strict accordance with the plan. After a while, 
however, a single course occupied a whole year ; and 
finally, his accumulating private affairs, and still more 
his employments in the public service, sending him to 
and fro, by land and sea, compelled him wholly to re- 
linquish this particular form of self-discipline ; though 
he always kept his account-book with him. 

Of all the virtues in his list. Order, and especially that 
rule of order, which requires a place for everything and 
everything in its place, gave him, he says, the most trou- 
ble. This arose partly from his becoming more and 
more subject to the varying convenience of others, in 
the transactions of his growing business ; but still more 
from not having been trained to such habits when young. 
Being blessed with a tenacious memory, he did not be- 
come fully aware of the value of habitual order in the 
details of all occupations, until advancing age began to 
diminish the readiness and precision of his recollection. 

The difficulty in question annoyed him so much, that 
he was sometimes tempted to renounce his resolution of 



THE SPECKLED AXE. 197 

amendment, in order to get rid of the struggle and res- 
cue his self-esteem from mortification at being no better 
able to control his habits in this particular direction. 
To exemplify his feelings, in regard to this matter, he 
relates an anecdote to the following effect. 

A man having bought an axe of a blacksmith, wished 
him to make the whole surface of the axe as bright as 
the bit. This the smith was ready to do, if the man 
would turn the grindstone by which alone his wish could 
be gratified. The man began to turn, and the smith to 
grind, pressing the broad face of the axe, with all the 
force of his strong arms, against the biting stone. The 
man pretty soon beginning to feel a lively curiosity to 
see, from time to time, how the brightening proceeded, 
kept quitting the crank to look at the axe, and at length 
concluded to take it as it was. ** No, no," said the 
smith, ** turn on, turn on ; we shall have the whole axe 
bright by-and-by ; as yet it is only speckled." " Yes," 
said the man, '* but I think I like a speckled axe hest^ 

And so — as the anecdote is applied — so it is with 
many a person, who undertakes to reform his habits 
and burnish his character. Surprised at the diffi- 
culty of the task, he soon gives it up, concluding that 
" a speckled axe is best;" and in a vein of pithy irony, 
Franklin shows, from his own experience, how ready 
self-indulgence is to find excuses, by remarking that 
*' something that pretended to be reason, kept suggesting 
that extreme nicety might be a kind of foppery in mor- 
als, and provoke ridicule ; that a perfect character might 
incur the inconvenience of being envied and hated ; and 
that a benevolent man should allow some faults in him- 
self, to keep his neighbors in countenance." 

But still, though Franklin found himself unable to 
reach that high point of Order, which he had been so 
ambitious to attain, yet, as he avers, his endeavors in 

17* 



198 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

that direction, contributed to render him a better and 
happier man, than he would have been, had he not made 
those endeavors. To his own account of his efforts at 
self-improvement, and of the somewhat artificial plan 
upon which he pursued his object, he has annexed the 
following impressive remarks : — 

" It may be well," says he, " that my posterity should 
be informed that to this little artifice, with the blessing 
of God, their ancestor owed the constant felicity of his 
life, down to his 79th year, in which this is written. 
What reverses may attend the remainder, is in the hand 
of Providence ; but if they arrive, the reflection on past 
happiness enjoyed, ought to help him bear them with 
resignation. To TemjJerance he ascribes his long-con- 
tinued health, and what is still left to him of a good 
constitution ; to Industry and Frugality, the early easi- 
ness of his circumstances and acquisition of his fortune, 
with all that knowledge that enabled him to be a useful 
citizen, and obtained for him some degree of reputation 
among the learned ; to Sincerity and Justice, the confi- 
dence of his country and the honorable employs it con- 
ferred upon him; and to the joint influence of the whole 
mass of the virtues, even in the imperfect state he was 
able to acquire them, all that evenness of temper, and 
cheerfulness in conversation, which make his company 
still sought for, and agreeable even to his young acquaint- 
ance. I hope that some of my descendants may follow 
the example, and reap the benefit." 

It was Franklin's original design to extend the little 
tabular book described, by adding a commentary on 
each of the virtues in the list, more fully to explain its 
positive advantages, as well as the certain disadvantages 
of the correlative vices ; and thus to furnish, for the use 
of others, especially the young, a manual, which, inas- 
much as it was to point out the practical methods of 



THE ART OP VIRTUE. 199 

forming habits of virtue, and not be simply preceptive, 
or speculative, was to be entitled " The Art of Virtue." 
Wiih this purpose in view he collected a considerable 
mass of materials in the form of hints and remarks, 
made from time to time, in the course of his reading and 
observation ; but the increase of business, and his accu- 
mulating engagements in the most important public af- 
fairs, prevented the execution of the intended commen- 
tary. 

The contemplated manual was, moreover, connected, 
in Franklin's mind, with another and far more compre- 
hensive plan he had conceived for carrying into wider 
effect his views of moral culture, through the instrumen- 
tality of an association, to be regularly organized and to 
act on society at large. But as this chapter has already 
exceeded the usual limit, we must defer to the next, the 
account, which it is deemed necessary to give of what 
he styles the " great and extensive project" referred to. 



200 LIFE OF BENJA3IIN FRANKLIN. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PROJECT FOR PROMOTING VIRTUE ALMANAC OF RICHARD 

SAUNDERS. 

From what lias already been said it is plain that 
Franklin's mind, at this period of his life, had become 
deeply impressed with the duty and advantage of self- 
discipline; of directing his thoughts and efforts to wor- 
thy ends ; and of training his faculties, both intellectual 
and moral, to the attainment of those ends by just and 
beneficent means ; such means as should reconcile and 
harmonize his own interests with the interests of his fel- 
low-men, and present a genuine exemplification of the 
doctrine that '^ true self love and social, are the same;" 
or, as the same doctrine had long before been announced, 
on the very highest authority, in the golden rule requir- 
ing evei'y one of us to " do unto others as we would have 
others to do unto us." He believed this to be the only 
way to secure any real happiness, and that no qualities are 
so likely to advance a poor man's fortune in the world, 
as veracity and integrity. 

That he strove, with unfeigned earnestness, to correct 
his faults and train himself to the habitual practice of 
virtue, is evident, not only from the general tenor of his 
life and the personal respect in which he was held, but is 
particularly and beautifully evinced by his candor and 
docility in receiving admonition, of which the following 
anecdote presents a good example. His list of virtues, 
as he relates, contained at first but twelve. A Quaker 



1 



HIS DEFERENTIAL MANNER IN CONVERSATION. 201 

friend of his frankly told him one day, that he was gen- 
erally considered proud, and in conversation sometimes 
overbearing and insolent, several instances of w^hich were 
called to Franklin's remembrance. He acknowledged 
the justice of the admonition, and added Humility to the 
list of virtues, to be particularly cultivated. He con- 
fesses that unremitting watchfulness was at first neces- 
sary, to break the offending habit, especially when en- 
gaged in animated discussion ; yet perseverance was at 
length crowned with success ; and then he found " the 
advantage of this change in his manners." It not only 
made intercourse at all times more agreeable, but it pro- 
cured ** a readier reception of his opinions, when right, 
and less mortification, when wrong." 

There is, indeed, no one point in manners and gen- 
eral deportment, which he has so frequently urged, as the 
language and tone of unassuming deference, in conver- 
sation, and in reasoning with others for the purpose of 
changing their opinions, or procuring their co-operation. 
To this deferential manner, connected with the preva- 
lent confidence in his integrity, he expressly ascribes his 
influence with his fellow-citizens, and in deliberative as- 
semblies ; for he was, as he declares, but a **bad speak- 
er, hesitating in his choice of words, and never elo- 
quent ;" and yet he " generally carried his point." 

The good sense of these remarks is obvious ; but his 
modesty, nevertheless, has suppressed one reason quite 
as efficient as any, in procuring him influence, and a 
ready adoption of his views ; and that reason was to be 
found in the sound judgment and sagacious forethought 
by which his views were usually distinguished. 

But Franklin's desires, on the great subject of moral 
improvement, were not limited to his own personal ben- 
efit and that of the individuals immediately connected 
with him, or of the single community in which his lot 



202 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

was cast. He felt an b(^st zeal to see the spread of 
such improvement in all communities, until its purifying 
and elevating influences should be everywhere manifest ; 
and he believed that much might be done toward the 
actual attainment of so great an end, by a thorough and 
persevering application of the principle of voluntary 
^ co-operation, in the form of an association organized on 
the basis of a few comprehensive elementary truths, in 
which all soberminded and earnest men could agree, and 
which could be everywhere received for the regulation 
of social action as well as individual conduct. 

The organization of such an association was the 
"great and extensive project" already alluded to. The 
original conception of this scheme is traced to a paper con- 
taining some observations, suggested to his mind by his 
historical reading, and dated at the library. May 9th, 
1731. These observations were stated in the form of 
general inferences, and their purport was, that the af- 
fairs of all nations, including wars and revolutions, were 
conducted by parties, acting for their own supposed in- 
terests, and that all confusion in those affairs resulted 
from the opposing views of such parties ; that under 
cover of their general objects, individual members 
were aiming at their own particular interests, and that 
when a party collectively had attained its ends, it 
was soon broken into factions by the clashing of those 
personal interests ; that only a few public men have 
acted with a single eye to the public good, and that 
when their acts have, in fact, promoted that end, it 
has generally been because that good has happened 
to harmonize with their own personal objects, not 
because their motives were disinterested and benev- 
olent ; that still fewer public men have acted with dis- 
tinct views to the common welfare of mankind ; and 
that, as a general conclusion from the whole of these 



PLAN FOR PROMOTING VIRTUE. 203 

premises, there was need of an organized party for the 
promotion of virtue, to be formed of the good men of 
all nations, and governed by suitable rules, which such 
men would be likely to obey more uniformly than the 
mass of men obey the laws of the land. To these ob- 
servations he subjoined a declaration of his belief, that 
if such a plan should be attempted, in the right spirit, 
by a properly-qualified person, it would prove accepta- 
ble to God, and be crowned with success. 

Such were some of the ideas and convictions, which 
this self-educated tradesman had, at the age of twenty-five 
years, drawn from history. They indicate a thoughtful 
and earnest mind, much insight into the ways and mo- 
tives of men, and those generous aspirations for the 
moral advancement of the race, which betoken a benev- 
olent and fervent spirit. 

It should be remarked that when this project first pre- 
sented itself to his mind, he did not purpose to enter at 
once upon the attempt to execute it. He was not then 
in a condition to do so ; but he meditated on it as a work 
to be attempted when his circumstances should give him 
the requisite leisure; making notes, meanwhile, of such 
thoughts as occurred to him from time to time, in rela- 
tion to it, and to the mode of putting it into operation. 
During his long residence abroad, those notes, made on 
detached pieces of paper, got scattered ; and when, af- 
ter his final return home from Europe, he came to write 
the account of this period of his life, only one of those 
pieces could be found. That one contained a memoran- 
dum of the general truths which he had supposed might 
properly serve as a basis of the association, and help to 
give it unity and cohesion. 

The contemplated association, it should be borne in 
mind, was not to be confined to one community, or a 
single country, but was to be extended through many. 



204 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

with the design of ultimately embracing all ; at least all 
those leading nations, whose power and influence, if 
united, would comprehend and sway the more impor- 
tant social movements of the whole of Christendom, and 
at last of the whole world. The general basis, therefore, 
on which the organization was to rest, should include, 
as he thought, only such truths, as were recognised 
among the elemental principles of every system of re- 
ligion, and not repugnant to any. Tliose truths, or 
principles, as stated by himself, were the following : — 

" That there is one God, who made all things; that 
he governs the world by his providence ; that he ought 
to be worshipped by adoration, prayer, and thanksgiv- 
ing; that the most acceptable service to God, is doing 
good to man ; that the soul is immortal ; and that God 
will certainl}'^ reward virtue, and punish vice, either here, 
or hereafter." 

As to the incipient proceedings, his idea was that only 
young and single men should associate, in the outset ; 
that every applicant for membership should, as prepara- 
tory to admission, exercise himself in the course of self- 
discipline already described in " The Art of Virtue," 
and at his initiation should declare his assent to the 
general truths above stated ; that the association should 
be kept secret, till it could get well agoing and acquire 
some solidity, so as to be able to exercise firmly a just 
discrimination in reference to apiDlicants for admission; 
but that any member, nevertheless, might disclose the 
enterprise to such individuals as he should personally 
know to be men of sense and virtue. It was, also, to be 
made one of the duties of the associates, to promote the 
just interests of one another. As to a name, he had se- 
lected that of " The Society of the Free and Easy;" 
his reason for it being, in substance, that, by the virtues 
to be practised they would be freed from the dominion 



PRACTICABILITY OF THE PLAN. 205 

of vice, and, especially, kept free from the bondage of 
debt, and easy in point of property, by their habits of 
industry and frugality. 

Such was this philanthropic project, as nearly as 
Franklin could recall his first conceptions of it, after 
the lapse of more than half a century. Though the " nar- 
rowness of his circumstances," at the time, and his pub- 
lic labors afterward, rendered any attempt on his part, 
to arrange the machinery necessary to set the plan at 
work, impossible, yet he never ceased to regard it as 
practicable. The " seeming magnitude of the under- 
taking," as he expressly states, offered to his mind no 
discouragement ; for he held that one man of sound un- 
derstanding and a persevering temper, aiming at good 
ends by just means, can work great changes in human 
affairs, if he will but devote all his powers to some one 
distinct object. 

In relation to the practicability of the plan, however, 
opinions will probably differ ; and yet, before pronoun- 
cing against the scheme, on this ground alone, it might 
well be deemed prudent to pause, in view of what the 
world, since its entrance upon the present century, has 
seen accomplished by societies, organized on the same 
principle of voluntary co-operation, for the morals and 
manners of great national communities, as well as for oth- 
er benevolent and religious purposes. Still, though the 
principle of action in all these cases is the same, there is 
a difference, which seems to be an important one in its 
practical bearings, between applying the principle to 
some one specific and clearly-defined object, as in the 
Temperance movement, for example, and the applica- 
tion of the same principle to a whole list of virtues and 
vices, or the entire range of moral action. 

We think, moreover, that the very element in this 
project, to which its projector looked chiefly for its suc- 

18 



206 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

cess, would have been found to be the chief obstacle to 
its acceptance. We refer to its neutrality in regard to 
every specific form of religion. Men generally, we ap- 
prehend, are most tenacious of precisely those points in 
their creeds on which they differ from all others, and for 
the sake of which alone are they adopted. This we sup- 
pose to be true, even among sects of the same geneial 
system of faith. But, in the case before us, from the 
platform of general truths is excluded everything pecu- 
liar, not merely to different sects claiming a common ori- 
gin, but to that entire system of religion which is re- 
ceived, not merely as true, but as inspired, throughout all 
Christendom; and which, moreover, notwithstanding the 
many ways in which it has been perverted, experience, 
to say nothing of diviner sanctions, has shown to be the 
surest support of a pure and stable morality, and there- 
fore, as we believe, the best and only undeceitful guide 
to those benign results which the contemplated project 
purposed to attain. Instead, therefore, of attracting mem- 
bers, or co-operation in any form, from the professors of 
Christianity, among whom, after all reasonable conces- 
sions on the score of unfaithfulness, have been found, in 
every age, the most earnest, steadfast, and efficient pro- 
moters of practical virtue, the neutrality mentioned would, 
we are persuaded, have constituted their invincible ob- 
jection to the whole scheme. 

Nevertheless, whatever may be the just conclusion 
upon these points, it will be admitted, we presume, that 
the reflections out of which this project grew, and the 
benefits purposed by the projector, give ample evidence, 
not only of benevolent motives and an honorable zeal for 
the welfare of society, but of enlightened views of some 
of the most important lessons taught by the previous ex- 
perience and actual condition of mankind. 

About this time, however, Franklin undertook another 



HIS ALMANAC. 207 

work, unquestionably practical in its whole character, 
and of unequivocal utility ; one which operated with pal- 
pable benefit on the general habits of the community, ex- 
tended his own reputation and influence, and contributed 
materially to his pecuniary advantage. This was the pub- 
lication, under the name of Richard Saunders, of the 
almanac, which afterward became so celebrated and pop- 
ular as *' Poor Richard's Almanac." He issued the first 
one of the annual series on the 19th of December, 1732, 
when he was drawing near the end of the twenty-seventh 
year of his age ; and he continued the publication for 
about twenty-five years : the number of copies for each 
year, during most of that period, amounting to nearly 
ten thousand. 

The character which he gave to this publication pre- 
sents conclusive proof of his desire to do good, and of his 
fidelity to the principles of sound morality and the max- 
ims of an honest life. Passing as it did, year after year, 
into many thousand families, very many of them being 
exceedingly limited in their pecuniary means, having few 
or none of the advantages of education, and engaged in 
occupations too full of labor to allow more than occasion- 
al and scanty opportunity for obtaining information from 
books, such a publication as Franklin furnished them 
was undoubedly valuable to them as a vehicle of instruc- 
tion ; and he availed himself of it for that purpose with 
such benevolent assiduity, so judiciously, and with such 
marked success, that in the course of four or five weeks 
after the first issue, it became necessary to print three 
editions of the very first number. And although, in sub- 
sequent years, the first edition for the year was greatly 
enlarged, yet still further issues became frequently ne- 
cessary to supply the demand for it. 

One of the features of this almanac which rendered it 
at that day most attractive and useful, was the great uum- 



208 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ber of maxims of practiSl, proverbial wisdom, with which 
its pages were richly stored. " I filled," says he, " all 
the little spaces that occurred between the remarkable 
days in the calendar, with proverbial sentences ; chiefly 
such as inculcated industry and frugality as the means of 
procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue ; it being 
more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly, 
aa, to use here one of those proverbs, " It is hard for an 
empty sack to stand upright^ 

When about to relinquish the publication of his alma- 
nac, he gathered these scattered maxims together, and in 
order to render them more permanently useful, he wove 
them into a regular discourse, supposed to have been de- 
livered by an aged man to a company of both sexes at a 
public auction. This discourse he entitled " The Way 
to Wealth," and prefixed it to the last number of his al- 
manac, published for the year 1757. It soon appeared 
in all the colonial newspapers ; and on reaching England, 
it was printed on one large sheet, to be hung against the 
wall of a room, that " the way to wealth" might always 
be in sight, and sjDread all over the British islands. It 
was, moreover, translated into French twice (in 1773 and 
1778) during Franklin's life, and once at least after his 
death. Of each of these translations several editions were 
issued, and the clergy and gentry distributed the copies 
gratuitously in great numbers among the poorer classes. 
Besides all this, in 1823, when the Greeks had entered 
into their struggle for national independence, " The Way 
to Wealth" was published at Paris for distribution among 
them, with a brief account of the author, in Romaic, or 
modern Greek, 

The performance in question is so celebrated, contains 
so much of the common sense and practical wisdom of 
past ages, and its maxims are so well fitted for the daily 
guidance of common life, that it is transcribed here, in 



f 



THE WAY TO WEALTH. 209 

full, as being essential to one of the leading purposes of 
this book. 



THE WAY TO WEALTH, 

As dearly shoivn in the Preface of an old Pennsylvania Almanac, entitled, 
" Poor Richard Improved." 

Courteous Reader : I have heard that nothing gives 
an author so great pleasure as to find his works respect- 
fully quoted by others. Judge, then, howmuch I must 
have been gratified by an incident I am going to relate 
to you. I stopped my horse lately where a great number 
of people were collected at an auction of merchants* 
goods. The hour of the sale not being come, they were 
conversing on the badness of the times ; and one of the 
company called to a plain, clean old man, with white 
locks — ** Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the 
times ? Will not these heavy taxes quite ruin the coun- 
try 1 How shall we ever be able to pay them? What 
would you advise us to?" Father Abraham stood up 
and replied, " If you would have my advice, I will give 
it you in short ; for A word to the wise is enough, as 
Poor Richard says." They joined in desiring him to 
speak ills mind, and gathering round him, he proceeded 
as follows : — _ .^- 

" Friends," said he, " the taxes are indeed very heavy, 
and if those laid on by the government were the only 
one^we had to pay, we might more easily discharge 
them ; but we have many others, and much more griev- 
ous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our 
idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four 
times as much by oxxv folly ; and from these taxes the 
commissioners can not ease or deliver us, by allowing an 
abatement. However, let us hearken to good advice, 
and something may be done for us ; for God helps them 
that help themselves, as Poor Richard says. 
18* 



210 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

** I. It would be thought a hard government that should 
tax its people one tenth of their time, to be employed in 
its service ; but idleness taxes many of us much more ; 
sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. 
Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than laJjor ivcars ; while 
the used key is always bright, as Poor Richard says. But 
dost thou love life ? then do not squander time, for that is 
the st^iff Ife is made of, as Poor Richard says. Hov^r 
much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep, for- 
getting that The sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that 
There will he sleeping enough in the grave, as Poor Rich- 
ard says. 

'* If time he of all things the most 'precious, wasting time 
must he, as Poor Richard says, the greatest prodigality ; 
since, as he elsewhere tells us, Lost time is never found 
again ; and what ive call time enough, altvays proves little 
enough. Let us then up and be doing, and doing to the 
purpose ; so, by diligence, shall we do more with less 
perplexity. Sloth makes all thijigs difficult, hut industry 
all easy ; and He that riseth late must trot all day, and 
shall scarce overtake his husiness at night ; while Laziness 
travels so slowly that Poverty soon overtakes him. Drive 
thy husiness, let not that drive thee ; and Early to hed and 
early to rise, 7nakes a man healthy, luealthy, and wise, as 
Poor Richard says. 

" So, what signifies wishing and hoping for better 
times ] We may make these times better, if we bestir 
ourselves. Industry need not wish ; and he that livW up- 
on hopes will die fasting. There are no gains without 
fains ; Then help>, hands, for I have no lands : or if I 
have, they are smartly taxed. He that hath a trade hath 
an estate ; and He that hath a calling hath an office of 
profit and honor, as Poor Richard says ; but then the 
trade must be worked at, and the calling followed, or 
neither the estate nor the office will enable us to pay 



r 



INDUSTRY A]>JD VIGILANCE. 21 1 

our taxes. If we are industrious we shall never starve; 
for At the working-man' s house hunger looks in, hut dares 
not enter. Nor will the bailiff or the constable enter, for 
Indtcstry pays debts, while despair increaseth them. What 
though you have found no treasure, nor has any rich re- 
lation left you a legacy, Diligence is the mother of good 
luck, and God gives all things to industry. Then Plough 
deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell 
and to keep. Work while it is called to-day, for you 
know not how much you may be hindered to-morrow. 
One to-day is worth two to-morrows, as Poor Richard 
says ; and further. Never leave that till to-morrow, which 
you can do to-day. If you were a servant, would you 
not be ashamed that a good master should catch you 
idle ? Are you then your own master ? Be ashamed to 
catch yourself idle, when there is so much to be done for 
yourself, your family, and your country. Handle your 
tools without mittens, remembering that The cat in gloves 
catches no mice, as Poor Richard says. It is true there 
is much to be done, and perhaps you are weak-handed ; 
but stick to it steadily, and you will see great effects ; for 
Constant dropping wears away stones ; and jBy diligence 
and patience the mouse ate in two the cable ; and Little 
strokes fell great oaks. 

" Methinks I hear some of you say, * Must a man af- 
ford himself no leisure V I will tell thee, my friend, 
what Poor Richard says : Employ thy time well, if thou 
meanest to gain leisure ; and Since thou art not sure of a 
minute, throw not away an hour. Leisure is time for 
doing something useful. This leisure the diligent -man 
will obtain, but the lazy man never ; for A life of leisure 
and a life of laziness are two things. Many, without la- 
bor, would live by their wits only, but they break for want 
of stock ; whereas, industry gives comfort, and plenty, 
and respect. Fly pleasures, and they will follow you. 



212 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

TJie diligent spinner liW a large shift ; and Now I 
have a sheep and a cow, everybody bids me good-mor- 
roio. 

** IL But with our industry we must likewise be steady, 
settled, and careful ; and oversee our own affairs with our 
own eyes, and not trust too much to others ; for, as Poor 
Richard says — 

/ never saw an oft removed tree, 
Nor yet an oft-removed family, 
That throve so well as those that settled be. 

And again, Three removes are as had as afire ; and again. 
Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee ; and again, 
Tf you would have your business done, go ; if not, send ; 
and again — 

He that by the ^ylough would thrive, 
• Himself must either hold or drive. 

And again, The eye of a master will do more worh than 
both his hands ; and again, Want of care does us more 
damage than ivant of knowledge ; and again, Not to over- 
see workmen, is to leave them your f^urse open. Trusting 
too much to others' care is the ruin of many; for In the 
aj^airs of this world men are saved, not by faith, but by 
the ivant of it ; but a man's own care is profitable ; for, 
If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you 
like, serve yourself A little neglect may breed great 
Tnischief; for want of a nail the shoe tvas lost ; for want 
of a shoe the horse was lost ; for want of a horse the rider 
was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy ; all for 
want of a little care about a horse-shoe nail. 

*' III. So much for industry, my friends, and attention 
to one's own business. But to these we must add fru- 
gality, if we would make our industry more certainly 
successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as 
he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and 



FRUGALITY. 213 

die not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen makes a lean 
will; and — 

Many estates are spent in the getting, 

Since women for tea, forsook spinning and knitting, 

And men for punch, forsook hewing and 



If you would he wealthy, think of saving as well as of 
getting. The Indies have not made Spain richy because 
her outgoes are greater than her incomes. 

" Away, then, with your expensive follies, and you will 
not then have so much cause to complain of hard times, 
heavy taxes, and chargeable families; for — 

Women and wine, game and deceit, 

Make the wealth small, and the want great. 

And further — What maintains one vice, would bring up 
two children. You may think, perhaps, that a little tea, 
or a little punch, now and then, or diet a little more costly, 
clothes a little finer, and a little entertainment now and 
then, can be no great matter; but remember. Many a 
little makes a micklc. Beware of little expenses. A 
small leak will sink a great ship, as Poor Richard says ; 
and again — Who dainties love, shall beggars prove ; and, 
moreover. Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them. 

" Here you are all got together at this sale of fineries 
and knick-knacks. You call them goods; but if you do 
not take care, they will prove evils to some of you. You 
expect they will be sold cheap ; and perhaps they may 
be, for less than they cost ; but, if you have no occasion 
for them, they must be dear to you. Remember what 
Poor Richard says : Buy what thou hast no need of, and 
ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries. And again — At 
a great pennyivorth pause a while. He means that pei- 
haps the cheapness is apparent only, and not real ; or the 
bargain, by straitening thee in thy business, may do thee 
more harm than good. For in another ^lace he says — 
Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths. 



214 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Again — It is fonlisJi to^iy out money in a purchase of 
repentance ; and yet this folly is practised every day at 
auctions, for want of minding the Almanac. Many a one, 
for the sake of finery on the back, has gone with a hun- 
gry belly, and half-stai'ved his family. Silks and satins, 
scarlet and velvets, p>ut out the hitchen-Jire, as Poor Rich- 
ard says. 

** These are not the necessaries of life ; they can scarce- 
ly be called the conveniences ; and yet, only because they 
look pretty, how many want to have them ! By these 
and other extravagances, the genteel are reduced to pov- 
erty, and forced to borrow of those they formerly, de- 
spised, but who, through industry and frugality, have 
maintained their standing ; in which case it appears 
plainly that A ploughman on his legs is higher than a 
gentleman on his knees, as Poor Richard says. Perhaps 
they have had a small estate left them, which they knew 
not the getting of. They think, It is day, a?id will never 
he night ; that a little to be spent out of so much, is not 
worth minding ; but Always taking out of the meal-tuh, 
and never putting in, soon comes to the bottom, as Poor 
Richard says ; and then. When the well is dry, they know 
the worth of water. But this they might have known 
before, if they had taken his advice. If you would know 
the value of money, go and try to borrow some ; for He 
that goes a borroiving, goes a sorrowing, as Poor Richard 
says ; and indeed so does he, that lends to such people, 
when he goes to get it again. Poor Richard further ad- 
vises and says — 

Fond pride of dress is sure a very curse ; 
Ere fancy you consult, consult your purse. 

And again — Pride is as loud a beggar as Want, and a 
great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine 
thing, you mustjj)uy ten more, that your appearance may 
be all of a piece j but Poor Richard says, It is easier to 



THE SLAVERY OF DEBT. 215 



suppress the first desire, than to satisfy all that follow %t. 
And it is as truly a folly for the poor to ape the rich, as 
for the frog to swell in order to equal the ox. 

Vessels large may venture more ; 

But little boats should keep near shore. 

It is, however, a folly soon punished ; for, as Poor Rich- 
ard says, Fride that dines on vanity, sujys on contemiit. 
Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty, and 
supped with Infuny. And after all, of what use is this 
pride of appearance, for which so much is nsked and suf- 
fered ? It can not promote health, nor ease pain; it 
makes no increase of merit in the person ; it creates envy; 
it hastens misfortune. 

" But what madness must it be to run into deht for these 
superfluities ! We are offered, by the terms of this sale, 
six months' credit ; and that, perhaps, has induced some 
of us to attend it, because we can not spare the ready 
money, and hope now to be fine without it. But ah ! think 
what you do, when you run into d^t ! You give to an- 
other, power over your own hberty. If you can not pay 
at the time, you will be ashamed to see your creditor ; 
you will be in fear when you speak to him ; you will 
make poor, pitiful, sneaking excuses ; and by degrees 
come to lose your veracity, and sink into base, down- 
right lying; for The second vice is lying, when the first is 
running into deht, as Poor Richard says; and again, to 
the same purpose. Lying rides upon Dehfs hack ; where- 
as, a freeborn American ought not to be ashamed, nor 
afraid to see or to speak to any man living. But poverty 
often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. It is hard 
for an empty sack to stand upright. 

" What would you think of that prince, or of that gov- 
ernment, that should issue an edict forbidding you to 
dress like a gentleman, or a gentlewoman, on pain of 
imprisonment or servitude ? Would you not say that 



216 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. S 

you were free, had a ri^t to dress as you please, and | 
that such an edict would be a breach of your privileges, 
and such a government tyrannical 1 And yet you are 
about to put yourself under such a tyranny, when you 
run into debt for such dress ! Your creditor has authori- 
ty, at his pleasure, to deprive you of your liberty, by con- 
fining you in jail till you shall be able to pay him. When 
you have got your bargain, you may perhaps think little 
of payment ; but, as Poor Richard says, Creditors have 
better memories than dehtors ; creditors are a superstitious 
sect, great observers of set days and times. The day comes 
round before you are aware, and the demand is made be- 
fore you are prepared to satisfy it; or, if you bear your 
debt in mind, the term, which at first seemed so long, 
will, as it lessens, appear extremely short. Time will 
seem to have added wings to his heels, as well as his 
shoulders. Those have a short Lent, who owe money to 
be paid at Easter. At present you may perhaps think 
yourselves in thrivinig circumstances, and that you can 
bear a little extravagance without injury; but — 

For age and want save while you may ; 
No morning sun lasts a wlwle day. 

Gain may be temporary and uncertain ; but ever, while 
you live, expense is constant and certain ; and It is easier 
to build tivo chimneys than to keep one in fuel, as Poor 
Richard says; so, Rather go to bed supjyerless, than rise 
in debt. 

Get what you can, and what you get, hold ; 

'Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold. 

And, when you have got this 2'>'^ilosopher''s stone, you will 
surely no longer complain of bad times, or the difficulty 
of paying taxes. 

** IV. This doctrine, my friends, is reason and wisdom ; 
but, after all, do not depend too much upon your own 
industry, and frugality, and prudence, though excellent 



PRECEPT AND PRACTICE. 217 

things ; for they may all be blasted, without the blessing 
of Heaven ; and, therefore, ask that blessing humbly, and 
be not uncharitable to those that at present seem to want 
it, but comfort and help them. Remember, Job suffered, 
and was afterward prosperous. 

" And now, to conclude, Experience keeps a dear scliool^ 
hut fools will learn in no other, as Poor Richard says, and 
scarcely in that; for it is ti-ue — We may give advice, hut 
we can not give conduct. However, remember this : They 
that will not he counselled, can not he helped ; and further, 
that If you will not hear Reason, she will surely rap your 
knuckles, as Poor Richard says." 

Such was the discourse ascribed to the white-haired 
Abraham; and the author, in the guise of Richard Saun- 
ders, adds, with a sj)ice of pungent humor, that " the peo- 
ple heard it, approved the doctrine, and immediately 
practised the contrary, just as if it had been a common 
seiTnon ; for the auction opened and they began to buy 
extravagantly." 

Still, though the company at the auction could not, in 
the immediate presence of temptation, be persuaded at 
once to forego the cheap bargains they had come express- 
ly to make, and for which their mouths were already 
watering ; yet, when the discourse, everywhere distribu- 
ted among the people, had an opportunity to make its 
quiet appeal to their good sense, without having to en- 
counter the power of rival vanities in the immediate pres- 
ence of the objects of competition, it took effect far and 
wide ; insomuch that, " as it discouraged useless expense 
in foreign superfluities, some thought it had its share of in- 
fluence, in producing that growing plenty of money, which 
was obsei-vable for several years after its publication." 

We have, on a previous page, noticed the censure some- 
times passed upon Franklin, as encouraging a too penu- 

19 



218 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

rious and niggardly spiri^by insisting so much as he did, 
in this and a number of other pieces, on the practice of 
industry, frugality, and economy. In the previous re- 
marks alluded to, it was our object to vindicate his ovv^n 
personal habits and motives from the censure mentioned. 
The discourse before us presents the subject in another 
aspect, on which a few words will not, we trust, be 
deemed inappropriate. 

The reason assigned by Franklin himself for the ear- 
nestness with which he inculcated the maxims of thrift, 
fully vindicates his motives from the censure in question ; 
for he expressly declares that in so doing, it was his pur- 
pose to render virtue more safe by placing it as much as 
possible out of the power of temptation, and securing 
that degree of personal independence, and fi'eedom of 
opinion and action, which are most favorable to the dis- 
charge of the various duties of life ; while his conduct, 
from first to last, shows that his own character was 
wholly free from the taint of covetousness, or sordid par- 
simony. 

It is very likely that the covetous and mean may have 
used his pithy sayings, not unfrequently, to cover a pre- 
determination to keep their hands fast shut against all 
appeals of private benevolence, or an enlightened and 
just public spirit. But to use those maxims thus, is to 
abuse them ; and it still remains true that industry and 
frugality are virtues ; that the maxims which enforce 
them are wise and useful ; and that the man who is able, 
by such teachings, to extend the practice of those virtues, 
is both a public and a private benefactor ; for notwith- 
standing the occasional abuse of such precepts, it is con- 
stantly true that, for the great majority of our race, the 
only way to obtain an honest livelihood, or train their 
children to become useful and wholesome members of 
society, is the exercise of the virtues mentioned. 



USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY. 219 

Indeed, the far more common danger to which men are 
exposed, is on the side of indolence, prodigality, improvi- 
dence, and the neglect of systematic economy in all af- 
fairs, whether public or private ; and these same vices 
withhold from the just calls of benevolence and worthy 
enterprise, far greater sums than all the hoardings of ava- 
rice and parsimony. The money continually lavished 
for the most frivolous purposes, or the most profligate and 
pernicious self-indulgence, take Christendom through, 
would feed and clothe, shelter, educate, and train to vir- 
tue, usefulness, and respectability, all the children of 
want, ignorance, vice, and infamy, on earth, and renovate 
the world. 



f 



220 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

NEWSPAPERS HE DEFENDS A CLERGYMAN LANGUAGES 

FAMILY CONCERNS NEW CLUBS MADE CLERK OF 

THE ASSEMBLY CITY AFFAIRS. 

Franklin availed himself of his newspaper, as he did 
of his almanac, to make it not merely a gazette of news 
and advertisements, but a vehicle of useful knowledge, 
and the means of promoting a relish for instructive read- 
ing and a just taste. With these views he inserted, from 
time to time, selections from the best writers in the lan- 
guage, and occasionally an^ essay of his own, which had 
been prepared for the Junto. Some of his early perform- 
ances, which first came before the public in this way, 
have been justly deemed worthy of preservation in the 
collections of his writings. One of these pieces, pub- 
lished in 1730, aside from its literary merits, has a fur- 
ther interest as presenting another view of the action of 
his mind and of his way of thinking, at that period, on 
important points of morality ; and as indicating also some- 
thing of the influences at work in that club, which con- 
tributed so much to exercise and develop his faculties. 

The piece referred to is a dialogue, in the Socratic 
manner, between two friends, " Concerning Virtue and 
Pleasure;" aiming " to show that a vicious man, what- 
ever may be his abilities, can not be properly called a 
man of sense." In this performance the author incul- 
cates the wisdom and duty of that comprehensive tem- 



SOUND PRINCIPLES. 221 

perance, or self-control, which is not less indispensable 
to the lasting enjoyment of even those pleasures of which 
the senses are the medium, than it is to the discharge of 
duty, or to the attainment of any kind of real and perma- 
nent good. Among other things, he touches upon the 
grave question of the moral responsibility involved in 
the formation of opinions ; maintaining the doctrine that 
a man is culpable for wrong opinions of the nature of 
human actions, so far as he neglects the means within 
his power to rectify them ; and that wrong actions in- 
duced by such opinions are not excused by mere good 
intentions. He holds, also, that a man's truest good is 
to be found in well-doing, or ii^" doing all the good he 
can to others;" that ''this is that constant and durable 
good which will afford contentment and satisfaction al- 
ways alikej" and is the only species of pleasure that 
^^ grows by repetitions^ and " ends but with our being." 

The moral principles which governed him in the con- 
duct of his newspaper give honorable evidence of recti- 
tude and firmness. He " carefully excluded all libelling 
and personal abuse;" and when the insertion of such ar- 
ticles was urged on the plea of *' the liberty of the press," 
and that *' a newspaper was like a stagecoach, in which 
any one who would pay, had a right to a place," he re- 
plied that ** he would not take it upon him to spread de- 
traction ; and that, having contracted with his subscribers 
to furnish them with what might be either useful or en- 
tertaining, he could not fill their paper with private alter- 
cation, in which they had no concern, without doing them 
great injustice." 

Such principles are worthy of all praise ; and the ob- 
servance of them, as Franklin urges from his own ample 
experience, will be found, in the main, as profitable as it 
is honest and just. 

Franklin, it appears, established the first printing-office 
19* 



222 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

in Charleston, South Carolina. On learning that such an 
establishment was desired there, he fitted out one of his 
journeymen with the necessary apparatus, in 1733, un- 
der a contract with him to sustain one third of the ex- 
penses and receive one third of the profits. The person 
thus sent is represented as an intelligent man, but neg- 
lectful of his accounts ; and though he remitted money 
occasionally, yet never, while he lived, did he furnish a 
regular and full statement of the affairs of the partner- 
ship. Upon his death, however, his widow continued 
the business ; and having been born and bred in Holland, 
where, as in other parts of Europe, females are taught 
book-keeping as a customary part of education, she lost 
no time in looking into the concerns of the printing- 
office ; and not only furnished as clear and exact an ex- 
hibit of the past transactions of the office as the books 
and papers left by her husband permitted, but she " con- 
tinued to account^ with the greatest regularity and exact- 
ness, every quarter afterward." 

This discreet and usefully-educated woman managed 
the business so well, as to derive from it the means of 
bringing up several children, in a very judicious and 
reputable manner ; and at the close of the partnership 
term, was able to buy out her partner's interest, and 
place her eldest son at the head of the establishment. 

This case is related by Franklin, as he remarks, for 
the purpose of commending the practice of making a 
knowledge of account-keeping, sufficient at least for the 
ordinary transactions of business, a part of the common 
education of both sexes alike ; and as being likely to prove 
more useful to " our young women and their children, in 
case of widowhood, than either music or dancing, by pre- 
serving them from the imposition of crafty men, and ena- 
bling them to continue perhaps a profitable mercantile 
house, wuth established correspondents, till a son is grown 



PLAGIARISM IN THE PULPIT. 223 

up, fit to go on with it, to the lasting advantage and en- 
riching of the family." 

About this period a young Presbyterian clergyman 
took charge of the congregation to which Franklin nom- 
inally belonged, -who soon became exceedingly popular. 
In his preaching he chiefly insisted, it appears, on the va- 
rious duties of life ; endeavoring to awaken the con- 
sciences of his hearers to the importance of a faithful 
discharge of those duties, as the best evidence of a true 
Christian spirit — the good fruit of the good tree ; and 
saying little of doctrinal points, and nothing of sectarian 
controversy. His discourses, being delivered in a very 
impressive manner, without notes, and uncommonly well 
composed, '' drew together considerable numbers of dif- 
ferent persuasions, who joined in admiring them ;" and 
as they constituted the kind of preaching which Franklin 
believed most likely to do good, he became a constant 
and gratified attendant upon them. 

At length, however, a charge of heresy was brought 
against the preacher, and he was arraigned thereon be- 
fore the synod. This occasioned a warm contest, in which 
Franklin sided with the accused ; and, as he remarks, 
" finding him, though an elegant preacher, a poor writer, 
wrote for him two or three pamphlets," besides an arti- 
cle in his paper. This was in the spring of 1735 ; and so 
much of a party was enlisted for the young minister, as 
to raise at first some hope of success. An opponent, how- 
ever, on hearing one of these much-applauded sermons, 
was strongly impressed with the conviction that he had 
already seen much of it elsewhere ; and after a little 
search he found its most striking portions in some ex- 
tracts, " in one of the British reviews, from a discourse 
of Dr. Foster ;" the same eloquent divine, doubtless, 
whom Pope, in the Epilogue to his Satires, styles '* mod- 
est Foster," and celebrates for " preaching well." 



224 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

This exposure was followed by the sentence of the 
synod against the young minister, who subsequently con- 
fessed to Franklin, that he did not write one of the ser- 
mons which had been so much admired ; and he stated 
that his memory was so retentive, that from a single read- 
ing of such a discourse, he could repeat the whole of it. 
Soon after being silenced, he went from Philadelphia ; 
and Franklin, though he paid his annual contribution, for 
many years, to support the minister of the congregation, 
ceased all further personal intercourse with it. 

Franklin made some valuable acquisitions, at this pe- 
riod, which show how much may be done, in this way, 
even by a man of business, if he will only adhere, with 
steady perseverance, to some plan judiciously adapted to 
the opportunities allowed by his occupation, for the pur- 
suit of collateral objects. In 1733, he began to study the 
French language; and without the smallest neglect of his 
business, he soon learned to read it with ease. He then 
took up Italian ; but being very fond of chess, and often 
playing the game with another person, who was engaged 
in acquiring the same language, Franklin found his favor- 
ite amusement encroaching so much upon his time, that 
he determined to quit it, unless his companion would 
agree that the winner, at the close of every game, should 
require of the loser a task in Italian to be performed at 
their next meeting. This course was pursued ; and, says 
Franklin, " as we played pretty equally, we thus heat 
each other into that language." He adds that afterward, 
" with a little pains-taking," he acquired enough Spanish 
to read that language also. 

When a boy he had received, it will be remembered, 
some instruction in the rudiments of the Latin, but was 
soon obliged to relinquish it, and had never resumed the 
study. After acquiring the three modern languages men- 
tioned, " on looking over a Latin Testament," he states 



THE STUnV 01' LANGUAGES. 



325 



his surprise at finding that he " understood more of that 
language than he had imagined ;" and thereupon apply- 
ing himself to it again, with his habitual earnestness, he 
now acquired a very valuable knowledge of the Latm. 

His own experience on this point led him to the opra- 
ion that the course usually pursued in the study of lan- 
guages, beginning with the Latin and Greek, and then 
taking up the modern tongues, is not judicious ; that much 
time would be saved, and more valuable acquisitions 
made, by reversing the process, and beginning with the 
living languages, as being most easily acquired ; and thus, 
to use his own figure, ascend the stairs regularly step by 
step by beginning with the one most readily attained 

But, besides the more rapid progress, which, as he 
thought, would thus be made in attaimng a series ot lan- 
gua..es, he suggested that another practical advantage 
tould be secured. If, for any reason, the student should 
be constrained, in the midst of his career, to relinquish 
his pursuit, he would still be in possession of one or more 
of the living languages, which, in a great majonty of 
cases, would prove to be the more useful part of the se- 



ries. 



The question here presented is certainly one of much 
practical importance. The order of study recommended 
seems to be the natural order. In the pursmt of knowl- 
edge we necessarily proceed from what is known, to 
what is not known ; and the same rule, in its spirit, would 
seem to require that, of things not yet known, the student 
should begin with that which is most easily acquired, and 
then proceed to the more difficult; especially when the 
obiects of pursuit are connected by so many affinities as 
are the languages in question. Various instances, more- 
over, of experience similar to that of Franklm s m this 
matter, might be cited in support of his recommenda- 



tioii. 



226 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

As to the practical value of the ancient and modern 
languages respectively, the question seems to be one 
which each individual should decide with exclusive ref- 
erence to his actual or intended pursuits. For all those 
who are directly concerned in the various callings of ac- 
tive life, including not only foreign trade, but every kind 
of intercourse with other nations, in either private or 
public affairs, the living languages are obviously the most 
important. So it seems to be, also, in reference to those 
professional employments, (engineering, for instance,) 
which depend on the physical sciences and the mathe- 
matics auxiliary to them ; inasmuch as all the learning, 
of any practical utility, is contained almost exclusively 
in the modern languages. 

Even in regard to some of the highest forms of litera- 
ture and art, so far as relates to works most distinguished 
for original conception and the deepest insight into hu- 
man life and character, the study of the ancient languages 
and literature seems to be of little importance ; for the 
most admirable works, of this class, have appeared in 
times of comparative rudeness, or were produced by men 
having little instruction of any kind, beyond what they 
derived from their own observation and experience. But, 
nevertheless, there are aspects in which the thorough 
mastery of the classic literature of ancient Greece and 
Rome seems to be of great moment. As a means of 
mental discipline, we believe such study to be superior 
to any other, particularly for training the mind to that 
nice discrimination, both in thought and expression, with- 
out which some of the highest qualities of style are rare- 
ly attainable, and to that clear perception and quick 
sense of whatever is beautiful, which seem indispensable 
to just and profound criticism, and to that high standard 
of excellence, and that tone of scholarship, from which 
alone, as from a presiding spirit, can emanate those re- 



HE VISITS HIS RELATIVES. 221 

fining influences, which seem necessary to insure the 
highest state of culture, in art or literature. 

In 1734, Franklin's industrious and frugal habits hav- 
ing placed him in easy circumstances, he paid a visit to 
his birthplace and family connexions. He had not been 
there for about ten years ; but death had made but few- 
breaches in the circle of those whom he had best known 
and loved. Both his parents were yet living. Several 
of his older brothers and sisters had died young, before 
he had an opportunity to know them ; but of those who 
reached maturity, and to whom his natural attachments 
had linked themselves as he grew up, all had thus far 
been spared, except his older sister Sarah, (Mrs. Daven- 
port,) who died in 1731. His family affections, which 
were warm, were much gratified by the visit ; and on his 
way back to Philadelphia, he visited his brother James, 
who had now for some time been settled at Newport, 
Rhode Island, and was still pursuing his trade as a 
printer. 

This visit was endeared to the two brothers by putting 
the seal to their mutual reconcilement. Old differences 
and heart-burnings had all passed away, and they met, 
as brothers should meet, with cordial affection. The 
health of James was much undermined, and, in the con- 
viction that his death could not be very distant, he de- 
sired his brother, whenever that event should occur, to 
take his son, then ten years old, and train him as a 
printer. To this desire Benjamin cheerfully assented; 
and he fulfilled it with generous fidelity, by taking his 
nephew, on the death of the lad's father in 1735, into his 
own family, sending him for a few years to school, and 
then placing him in his printing-office. The widow of 
James continued his business at Newport, till her son 
came to the age of twenty-one years ; when, being fur- 
nished by his uncle with a full set of new types, he re- 



228 LIFE or BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

turned to his mother and took the business out of her 
hands into his own. In this way did Franklin more than 
redeem his pledge to his deceased brother, and make 
compensation for not having served out the term of his 
apprenticeship. 

The sorest affliction Franklin had yet suffered, befell 
him in 1736, in the death of one of his two sons by the 
small-pox taken in what is called the natural way. " He 
was a fine boy of four years old," says the father, *' and I 
long regretted him bitterly." He also states his regret 
that he had not had the child inoculated ; and he makes 
this declaration, as he remarks, as an admonition to those 
parents, who assign as their reason for omitting to have 
their children inoculated, that they could never forgive 
^emselves, if a child should die of the disease thus vol- 
untarily communicated ; inasmuch as his own experience 
showed, to use his own words, " that the regret may be 
the same either way ; and therefore the safer course should 
be chosen." 

The Junto had proved so agreeable and advantageous 
to its members, that some of them wished to enlarge the 
club by bringing in their friends. But this would have 
extended its number beyond twelve, which had been fixed 
as a limit well fitted for convenience, and for the perma- 
nent preservation of harmony. In order, moreover, to 
avoid annoying applications for admission, the existence 
as well as nature of the club had been a secret. 

Franklin, being unwilling thus to augment the num- 
bers of the existing association, proposed, instead, that 
each member should start a new club, on the same prin- 
ciples and subject to the same regulations, but without 
making known his connexion with the parent-club ; while 
he should, at the same time, obey the instructions of the 
parent-club, in suggesting inquiries and directing the ac- 
tion of the new club, and should also make regular re- 



HE IS MADE CLERK OF THE ASSEMBLY. 229 

ports of its doings : thus rendering the new clubs subor- 
dinate to the parent- Junto, and their founders the chan- 
nels of communication with them, but without their 
knowledge of the fact. 

In support of his proposal he urged that a much larger 
number of young men would thus be enabled to enjoy 
the advantages of su^h an association ; that the members 
of the parent-club would thus be enabled to obtain much 
more extended and correct knowledge of the views of all 
classes of the community, on every important occasion or 
subject ; that they could thus, also, exert a more exten- 
sive and efficient influence for the advancement of the 
public interests, as well as in behalf of their own legiti- 
mate private objects ; and, finally, that they would thus 
increase their power and opportunities to be useful. 

The proposed plan was assented to ; each member of 
the Junto endeavored to organize a new club ; and sev- 
eral of them succeeded. Of the five or six clubs thus 
formed, the names of three, as given by Franklin, were — 
The Vine — The Union — and The Band; and he says 
that they were not only useful to their own members re- 
spectively, but that they afforded much information as 
well as amusement to the Junto, besides enabling it to 
exert occasionally, and to a considerable extent, that in- 
fluence on the public mind, which was one of the induce- 
ments to establish them. 

It was also in the same year, 1736, that Franklin re- 
ceived his first political appointment, in being chosen by 
the General Assembly of Pennsylvania clerk of that body. 
On this first occasion he was chosen without opposition. 
But the members of the Assembly, as well as the clerk, 
being elected annually, the next year, 1737, a new mem- 
ber, stated to have been a man of fortune, education, and 
talents, made a long speech against the re-election of 
Franklin, and in behalf of another candidate for the 
20 



230 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

clerkship. Franklin, however, was again placed in the 
office, which was a desirable one, not only for its respec- 
tability, but also for its emoluments, and for the influ- 
ence it gave him with the members ; by which means he 
secured for himself the still more profitable employment 
of printing the journals of the Assembly, the laws, the 
paper-money, and such other public printing as occasion- 
ally became necessary. 

The name of the new member, who so strenuously op- 
posed the re-election of Franklin as clerk of the Assem- 
bly, is not stated ; but the latter converted him into a 
friend before the close of the session. The course he 
took to attain this end furnishes too valuable a lesson 
and is too characteristic of the man, to be omitted. Frank- 
lin, readily perceiving that the person in question was 
certain to become an influential member of such a body, 
felt a natural and proper regret to find such a man op- 
posed to him for no just reason, but in all probability from 
a total misconception of his character, and resolved to 
win his good will. The manner in which he sought and 
attained this end, is best stated in his own words : — 

" I did not aim at gaining his favor," says Franklin, 
'* by paying any servile respect to him ; but, after some 
time, took this method. Having heard that he had in 
his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I 
wrote a note to him, expressing my desire to peruse that 
book, and requesting that he would do me the favor of 
lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediate- 
ly ; and I returned it in about a week, with another note, 
exjjressing strongly my sense of the favor. When we 
next met in the house, he spoke to me, which he had 
never done before, and with great civility ; and he ever 
after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occa- 
sions ; so that we became great friends, and our friend 
ship continued to his death." 



HOW TO REMOVE OPPOSITION. 231 

Franklin gives this anecdote as a verification of the 
old maxim, that " He that hath done you one kindness, 
will be more ready to do you another, than he to whom 
you have yourself done a favor ;" and " it shows," he 
adds, " how much more profitable it is, prudently to re* 
move^ than to resent, return, and continue, inimical pro- 
ceedings." 

The incidents related, and their results, were certainly 
honorable to the good sense and liberal feeling of both 
parties ; though Franklin's course, at least, was very dif- 
ferent from that which ordinary men would have pur- 
sued. If it should be said that the motive, on both sides, 
was selfish, the remark, even if admitted to be true, would 
have little force, and no value ; for the very sufficient 
reason that, if such were the motive, it was a far more 
creditable and enlightened form of self-love than any ex- 
hibition of such feelings in the unworthy and debasing 
manner of vulgar resentment and vindictive hate — emo- 
tions which not only belong to the very essence of the 
most intense and intolerant selfishness, but imply, be- 
sides, in a case like the one in question, an arrogant as- 
sumption of merit so great, as to render any opposition 
to its demands equivalent to an invasion of personal 
rights. But it seems to be a mere abuse of terms to 
pronounce the conduct described selfish. To our ap- 
prehension it evinces unusual magnanimity in both par- 
ties ; and, in Franklin, a candid allowance for misconcep- 
tion on the part of his opponent, with a manly admission 
of the right of that opponent to advocate the election of 
any candidate he liked best. Indeed, his conduct ap- 
proaches so near that which is enjoined by the Christian 
precepts, to return good for evil, to do as you would be 
done by, and to forgive injuries, that any practical dis- 
tinction seems difficult ; and if men would always act 
with the same good sense and moderation, or even with 



232 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

equally enlightened sell-love, most of the personal feuds 
that embitter life and disturb its tranquillity would dis- 
appear, and the enmities, kindled by hasty resentment, 
and fostered by the pernicious sentiment of false honor, 
*^ould be happily exchanged for friendship and peace. 

In 1737, the deputy-postmaster at Philadelphia having 
proved negligent respecting his official accounts, was re- 
moved, and Franklin was appointed in his place. This 
appointment gratified Franklin, not so much for the salary 
connected with it, which was but small, as because, by 
relieving his correspondence from all expense, and ena- 
bling him to improve his newspaper, its circulation and 
advertising custom were so increased that its profits now 
began to yield a considerable income. This increase of 
business and emolument was still further aided by the 
diminishing patronage received by his rival, Bradford, 
the displaced postmaster, who had, while in office, for- 
bidden his post-riders to distribute any papers but his 
own. Upon the change which thus took place in their 
mutual relations, however, Franklin, content with the 
thriving condition of his affairs, had the neighborly feel- 
ing and magnanimity not to retaliate upon his competi- 
tor the prohibition just mentioned ; and in relating this 
reversal of their respective positions, he makes the fol- 
lowing practical and characteristic comment :-^ 

*' Thus Bradford," says Franklin, " suffered greatly 
from his neglect in due accounting ; and I mention it as 
a lesson to those young men, who may be employed in 
managing affairs for others, that they should always ren- 
der accounts and make remittances with great clearness 
and punctuality. A character for observing such a course, 
is the most powerful of all recommendations to new em- 
ployments and increase of business." 

It is interesting to note the difference between the 
movement of the public mail, in those old colonial days, 



POST-RIDING THE CITY WATCH. 233 

when its bags of at most but a few score pounds in weight, 
were almost universally carried on horseback, and in 
these times, when it is speeded in tons by steam. In 
1737, the post-rider went southward from Philadelphia 
to Newport, in Virginia, once a month ; and northward, 
as far as New York, once every fortnight. In 1743, this 
activity was so much accelerated that, in summer, the 
mail was carried southward as far as Annapolis, in Ma- 
ryland, once in two weeks, and northward to New York 
every week ; though, in winter, the transit, each way, was 
still at the previous rates. This, moreover, is a fair spe- 
cimen of the general sluggishness of all social movements 
in those times, when compared with the intense activity 
now imparted to them all by steam, which, in every prac- 
tical sense, has reduced a month to a day, and the seven 
days of the week to as many hours ; while the yet more 
wonderful application of another of nature's elemental 
forces, to the spreading of intelligence, has reduced even 
those hours to seconds. 

With a productive business, so well established and 
methodized as to demand less of his personal attention 
to its details, Franklin, now at the age of thirty-one years, 
was led, by his innate desire to be useful to the extent 
of his ability, to apply his mind, more directly than he 
had yet done, to the consideration of public affairs, and 
especially to the concerns of the community to which he 
immediately belonged. His first effort, in this way, was 
directed to the improvement of the night-watch of the 
city. This important concern was, at that time, intrust- 
ed wholly to the ward constables, who called out small 
nightly squads of housekeepers to patrol their respective 
beats. Such housekeepers as did not or could not turn 
out, paid to the constable of their ward six shillings each, 
for the ostensible purpose of enabling him to hire substi- 
tutes. But as the sums thus collected, even if faithfully 
20* 



234 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

applied, were more than sufficient for the alleged pur- 
pose, and as the constables seem never to have been re- 
quired to account for the surplus money, great irregulari- 
ties and abuses ensued. These payments, moreover, 
when considered as a tax levied to protect property, were 
monstrously unequal, each non-serving housekeeper pay- 
ing the same amount, without regard to sex or property. 

Franklin's first step toward reforming this objectiona- 
ble system, was to read before the Junto a paper expo- 
sing the inefficiency and abuses of the course pursued. 
He insisted especially on the gross inequality and injus- 
tice of the assessment, under which a poor widow, (to 
use one of his own illustrations,) who could not render 
the personal service required, and whose property to be 
protected might not exceed fifty pounds, was, if a house- 
keeper, obliged to pay as much as the richest merchant 
'who had merchandise to the amount of thousands of 
pounds in his warehouses; and he proposed that able- 
bodied and trusty men should be hired for fixed terms of 
service, and the expense paid by a general tax fairly ap- 
portioned upon property. 

This obviously just proposal was approved by the 
Junto ; and on being, by its members, brought forward 
in the other clubs, as an original proposition in each, it 
was well received by them also. The new plan was not 
immediately carried into effect by the city authorities ; 
but, by the course pursued, and the discussions to which 
it led, not only in the clubs, but in the community gener- 
ally, the public mind was prepared for it, and in a few 
years, when the young men belonging to the clubs came 
to participate more fully and directly in the management 
of municipal concerns, it was adopted. 

Another and still more important service rendered to 
Philadelphia, about the same period, by Franklin, was 
the establishment of the first fire-company in that city. 



FIRE-COMPANIES INTRODUCED. 235 

Byway of preparation for the accomplishment of his ob- 
ject, he first laid before the Junto, and then before the 
public, a full and valuable paper on the general subject 
of fires, calling attention to the manner in which houses 
and other buildings are often exposed to them by injudi- 
cious arrangements in their structure, as well as by the 
personal heedlessness of their occupants ; and suggesting 
various modes of avoiding such hazards beforehand, as 
well as different means of extinguishing the flames when 
kindled. 

The publication of this paper was shortly followed by 
the actual organization of a fire-company, and by other 
measures for security against fires. At Franklin's sug- 
gestions, also, the members of the company were to pro- 
vide themselves with leathern buckets, for supplying 
water, and with sacks and baskets for saving goods, and 
to take them to every fire. They agreed also to meet, 
from time to time, to communicate facts and exchange 
views in relation to fires and the best way to encounter 
them. 

The value of this association was soon felt to be so 
great, that others like it were successively formed, until 
a numerous and efficient force for the protection of the 
city was the result ; and more than fifty years after, when 
Franklin was relating these transactions, he took occa- 
sion to observe, with a gratification he was well entitled 
to enjoy, that the Union Fire-Co7npany, the first one 
formed, was still existing, though all its original mem- 
bers were dead, except himself and another person a 
year older than himself 

Such were some of the services rendered to the com- 
munity by Franklin in his early manhood. It was the 
constant tendency of his mind to apply principles to 
practice — his strongly-marked disposition and ability to 
be useful, guided by an enlightened and sincere public 



236 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

spirit, which won for him the esteem and confidence of 
society, and laid the foundation of that influence with 
his fellow-citizens, which, to their advantage and the 
credit of their good sense, not less than to his own honor, 
he ultimately enjoyed, to an extent not attained by any 
of his cotemporaries, and probably never surpassed. 



REV. GEORGE WHITEPIELD. 237 



CHAPTER XIX. 

WHITEFIELD RELIGIOUS VIEWS ACADEMIES AND SCIEN- 
TIFIC ASSOCIATIONS MILITARY DEFENCE, AND THE 

QUAKERS WESTERN POSTS THE FRANKLIN STOVE. 

In his own naiTative of this period of his life, Frank- 
lin has given an interesting sketch of that celebrated 
popular preacher, the Rev. George Whitefield, who made 
his first appearance in this country in the year 1739. As 
Whitefield, including his various visits, was a good deal 
in Philadelphia, Franklin became intimately acquainted 
with him ; and though never one of his converts, he was 
deeply impressed by the earnest and exciting eloquence 
of the preacher, and held him in high esteem as a thor- 
oughly sincere, honest, warm-hearted, benevolent man. 

When Whitefield first presented himself in Philadel- 
phia, the clergy of that city freely admitted him into 
their pulpits ; but for some reason not specifically stated, 
they pretty soon took offence, and closed their churches 
against him, so that he was compelled for a time to ad- 
dress the people in the fields. This, however, being 
found not only inconvenient and uncomfortable, but haz- 
ardous to health, a proposal was started among some of 
his more zealous and active admirers to build an inde- 
pendent meeting-house, to which not only Whitefield, 
but any other preacher of whatever denomination, should 
have free access. The proposal instantly took, and sub- 
scriptions were speedily obtained sufficient to purchase 



238 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ground and erect a plain, substantial edifice, a hundred 
feet in length by seventy in width. The work was soon 
done, and the whole property conveyed, in due legal 
form, to trustees, to be held for " the use of any preach- 
er of any religious persuasion," who should wish to pre- 
sent to the public his views on any religious subject what- 
ever ; the purpose, in providing such a house, not being 
the accommodation of any particular sect, but the people 
generally. 

After some time spent in Philadelphia, Whitefield, pro- 
ceeded southward as far as Georgia, preaching at all the 
principal places on his way. Georgia had been organ- 
ized as a colony only about six years ; and its first set- 
tlers, as described by Franklin, " instead of being hardy, 
industrious husbandmen, accustomed to labor — the only 
soit of people fit for such an enterprise" — consisted 
chiefly of ** families of broken shopkeepers and other in- 
solvent debtors," unqualified both by character and hab- 
its for clearing away forests and converting a wilderness 
into a fruitful country, or for encountering the privations 
and the various exigencies of a new settlement. The 
natural consequences of such a beginning speedily fol- 
lowed. These first colonists rapidly perished, leaving 
a large number of helpless children, whose destitute and 
wretched condition so deeply moved the quick sympa- 
thies of Whitefield, that he straightway resolved upon 
the project of erecting, in the new colony, an asylum for 
the support and education of its numerous orphans ; and 
again turning his face northward, he pressed the subject 
upon his hearers as he advanced, and everywhere so suc- 
cessfully, that, before reaching Philadelphia, he had gath- 
ered a large amount of contributions in behalf of the 
undertaking. 

On reaching Philadelphia, Whitefield broached his 
plans and proceedings to Franklin. The latter, though 



EFFECT OF PREACHING. 239 

concurring in the object proposed, showed his better 
judgment and more practical good sense, by advising 
that, inasmuch as neither mechanics nor materials for the 
work could be furnished in Georgia, instead of incurring 
the heavy and needless cost of sending everything to the 
new settlement, it would be wiser, in every respect, not 
only for the early completion of a suitable edifice, but 
for the proper management of the institution afterward, 
to erect the asylum in Philadelphia, and bring the chil- 
dren thither. But Whitefield rejected this judicious ad- 
vice, and persisted in his preconceived course with such 
stubbornness, that Franklin, offended at his obstinacy, 
determined he would give nothing in aid of the underta- 
king. To this determination, ho\\«ever, he did not long 
adhere ; and he has himself related the manner in which 
it was overcome, as an illustration of the power of White- 
field's preaching. The anecdote is too interesting to be 
omitted, and is best told in his own words. 

" I happened soon after," says Franklin, " to attend 
one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he 
intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved 
he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a 
handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, 
and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to 
soften, and concluded to give the copper. Another sti'oke 
of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined 
me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably, that 
I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold 
and all." 

Another hearer who agreed with Franklin in rela- 
tion to the asylum, no less a man than Thomas Hopkin- 
son, the father of Francis, was swayed in like manner by 
the same sermon. To secure himself against the influ- 
ence of the preacher, he had purposely omitted to bring 
any money with him ; but as the discourse drew to an 



240 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

end, he became so warm with the desire to give, that he 
turned to a Quaker standing by him, an old acquaintance, 
to borrow money for the purpose. The excitement of 
his feelings is well indicated by the answer of the Qua- 
ker. ** At any other time, Friend Hopkinson," said he, 
** I would lend. to thee freely, but not now, for thou seem- 
est to be out of thy right senses." 

Though Franklin and Hopkinson were both men of 
quick and generous feelings, yet were they also men of 
cultivated minds, and not likely to be much moved by 
coarse and spurious appeals to their sympathies ; so that 
the testimony thus borne by them to the persuasive pow- 
er of Whitefield's eloquence, may be considered une- 
quivocal and conclu^ve. 

In repelling some insinuations which had been thrown 
out against Whitefield's fidelity in applying the money 
he was collecting for the orphan asylum, Franklin, in the 
most explicit terms, has declared his conviction that " he 
was in all his conduct a perfectly honest man." No man, 
probably, knew Whitefield more thoroughly than did 
Franklin ; who, besides having entertained him as a guest 
at his own house, and seen much of him in social inter- 
course, had also transacted a good deal of business with 
him, as the printer and publisher of four volumes of his 
sermons and journals ; so that these facts, taken in con- 
nexion with Franklin's quick and clear insight into char- 
acter, seem to render his testimony conclusive. 

Franklin, moreover, fully confirms the traditionary 
statements respecting the vast multitudes, counted by 
thousands, which flocked together, on foot, on wheels, 
and on horseback, and not heeding the weather, re- 
mained for hours in the open air, to listen to the fervid 
eloquence of the man, who, for his power in swaying 
masses, must probably be regarded as the most remark- 
able preacher of modern times. 



REACH OF THE VOICE. 241 

His voice was doubtless one of the means of his pow- 
er. " Whitefield," says Franklin, " had a loud and clear 
voice, and he articulated his words so perfectly, that he 
might be heard and understood at a great distance." To 
test this distance, Franklin once took an opportunity, 
when Whitefield was preaching from the steps of the 
Philadelphia courthouse. These steps, it appears, stood 
on the line of one side of Second street, and fronted the 
middle of Market street ; so that people, to the right and 
left, in the former street, and in front in the latter, could 
both see and hear the speaker. By varying his distance 
to the front, in Market street, Franklin found that he 
could distinctly hear and understand all that was uttered, 
until he had receded very nearly to Front street. Ta- 
king that distance as the radius of a semicircle filled with 
listeners, and allowing two square feet to each, he com- 
puted that the preacher " might be well heard by more 
than thirty thousand." This computation, it will be 
seen, makes no allowance for the number of persons, 
who, if in the open field, might hear distinctly, though 
back of the speaker ; a number sufficient, probably, to 
balance the advantage gained, in point of distance, by the 
passage of the voice along a street compactly built on 
both sides ; and Franklin adds that his experiment " rec- 
onciled him to the accounts of Whitefield's having 
preached to twenty-five thousand in the fields," as well 
as to what he had read of armies harangued by their 
leaders. 

Franklin expresses his belief that Whitefield would not 
only have better consulted his reputation, but would have 
retained a stronger hold on the admiration of the world, 
and secured a larger body of followers, if he had never 
published any of his sermons or other writings, but had 
intrusted his opinions and his fame to oral tradition and 
the zeal of his proselytes. 

21 



242 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

A further brief reference, in this connexion, to Frank- 
lin's own religious views at this period, seems proper, in 
oi'der to keep pace with the progress of his mind as he 
advanced in years ; and it will be the more interesting from 
the fact that the expression of them was called forth in 
his correspondence Avith his parents, now drawing near 
the close of life. 

It appears that in March, 1738, his father wrote him 
a letter, in which much concern was expressed, on be- 
half of both his parents, lest he had embraced some dan- 
gerous errors. In his reply, dated the 13th of April 
ensuing, and marked throughout by filial respect and af- 
fection, Franklin, readily admitting his full share of errors, 
observes, in substance, that considering the infirmities of 
our nature, " the influences of education, custom, books, 
and company," it would evince both vanity and presump- 
tion in any man to claim that " all the doctrines he holds 
are true, and all he rejects are false ;" that he thought 
** opinions should be judged of by their influences and 
effects ; and if a man holds none that tend to make him 
less virtuous, or more vicious, it may be concluded he 
holds none that are dangerous," which he trusted was 
his own case ; that ** since it is no more in a man's pow- 
er to think than to look like another, all that should be 
expected of him was to keep his mind open to conviction, 
to hear patiently, and to examine attentively, whatever 
is offered ;" that he had paid little regard to sectarian 
distinctions; that, as he thought, ** vital religion always 
suffers, when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue ;" 
and that the Scriptures assure us the awards of the final 
judgment will turn, "not on what we have thought, but 
what we have clone.^' 

While on this topic it may be well to cite an affection- 
ate letter of his to his sister, Mrs. Jane Mecom, written 
a few years later, and speaking somewhat more fully on 



HIS PARTNERSHIPS. 243 

one or two points. It seems that she had received the 
impression, as he understood some passages in a letter 
from her, that he held the opinion that ** good works," 
would merit heaven, and that God was not to be wor- 
shipped. 

These ideas he repelled by replying to his sister, that 
"so far from thinking that God is not to be worshipped, 
he had composed a book of devotions, for his own use ;" 
and that in his belief, " there are few if any in the world 
so weak as to imagine, that the little good we can do 
here, can merit so vast a reward hereafter ;" that there 
were " some things in the New England doctrine and 
worship, which he could not agree with ;" but that he 
" did not therefore condemn them, or desire to shake 
her belief or practice of them." He then advises his 
sister to read certain portions of " the late book of Mr. 
Edwards, on the revival of religion in New England ;" 
and adds ; " when you judge of others, if you can per- 
ceive the fruit to be good, do not terrify yourself that 
the tree may be evil, but be assured that it is not so ; for 
you know who has said that men do not gather grapes 
from thorns, nor Jigs from thistles.^' 

Franklin's private affairs were now in a very prosper- 
ous condition. His newspaper, which had obtained a 
very extensive circulation, and was, indeed, the only one 
of much importance in Pennsylvania and the adjacent 
colonies, had become "very profitable," and his "busi- 
ness was constantly augmenting." In these circumstan- 
ces, as he had found his partnership at Charleston a 
gainful one, he formed others, with several persons, who 
had, while in his employ, acquired his confidence both 
as good workmen and as competent to manage busi- 
ness ; thus enabling them to establish themselves advan- 
tageously, while his own interest was also promoted. 

These partnerships present so judicious a mode of 



244 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

assisting young men oi merit, who have a good trade, 
but no money, to set themselves up in life, that it may 
be useful to state the general terms on which they were 
formed. Franklin furnished those portions of the stock 
which required the principal outlay of capital, such as 
the press and types ; while the less costly articles were 
supplied by the other partner, as the wants of business 
required. The charges for rent, ink, paper, and oth- 
er current expenses of the office, were deducted from 
the gross earnings, and then, of the residue of both cash 
and debts, Franklin took onarthird and his partner two 
thirds. These contracts were usually limited to six years, 
at the end of which his partners were able, in most 
cases, to buy out Franklin's interest, and go on success- 
fully with the business for themselves. To avoid the 
disputes, which so frequently disturb and break up such 
connections, Franklin made it a point to put all the con- 
ditions and obligations on both sides, in writing; justly 
remarking that, whatever may " be the mutual esteem 
and confidence of the parties, in the outset, some idea 
of unequal participation in the burdens of the concern, 
is but too likely to lead to discontents and jealousies, 
followed by breach of friendship, animosity, and expen- 
sive lawsuits." 

Another feature of these contracts of partnership, 
which Franklin has omitted to mention, must, no doubt, 
have contributed materially to their success. They were 
obviously liberal on his part. He had the good sense 
to understand that hard bargains, whatever seeming ad- 
vantages they may, at first, promise to the party who 
may have the power to prescribe terms, are seldom the 
most beneficial in their results ; and that not only equity, 
but sound policy also, requires that contracts covering 
any considerable length of time, especially such as re- 
late to a business, which, though demanding a moderate 



EFFORT TO PROMOTE EDUCATION. 245 

investment of money, must depend more on labor than 
capital, for its productiveness, should be mutually advan- 
tageous to be faithfully executed, and prove, on the 
whole, really beneficial. 

No success in business, or in the accumulation of prop- 
erty, could be more legitimate in itself, or more valuable 
as an example, than Franklin's ; for it was the result of 
his own industry, prudence, and well-directed enterprise ; 
and he enjoyed his prosperity with a modest and grate- 
ful satisfaction. Having provided for the welfare of his 
family, and thus not only contented his sense of duty, 
but secured the means of gratifying his affections, he so 
arranged his private concerns, that, with ordinary over- 
sight and care, his business would continue to yield a 
moderately-increasing income ; and thus he enabled him- 
self to give more time to the studies he liked best, as well 
as to the public interests. 

The community to which he belonged, though in the 
main a thriving one, was still destitute of some valuable 
institutions, which a little public spirit, if judiciously di- 
rected, might easily supply. Among these were a native 
military force, properly organized, for the protection of 
the province ; seminaries for the education of youth in the 
higher branches of knowledge ; and some form of associa- 
tion among men of mature years, more or less habitually 
engaged in the pursuit of knowledge, to promote the 
investigation of facts in the physical sciences, and the 
more systematic cultivation of natural philosophy. 

In 1743, in the hope of supplying some of the defi- 
ciencies referred to, Franklin digested a plan for an 
academy, at the head of which he proposed that the 
Rev. Hugh Peters, then unemployed, should be placed 
as principal. That gentleman, however, looking, as he 
then was, for a more profitable station, which he shortly 
found, in the service of the Proprietaries of the province, 

21* 



246 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

as provincial secretary, cleclined the proffered appoint- 
ment ; and as Franklin was not acquainted with any- 
other person, whom he considered properly qualified for 
the place in question, the project of the academy was 
necessarily deferred. The plan of an academy as drawn 
up by Franklin, is to be found in his works ; and it does 
honor to the author, by its enlightened and liberal views 
of what should be deemed a thorough practical course 
of instruction, for at least the more intelligent classes of 
people living under free institutions, and responsible for 
the just and successful administration of public affairs, as 
well as the proper discharge of their social and civil 
duties. 

Another plan, which, about the same time, he pro- 
posed, for the formation of a philosophical society, met 
more immediate success. This plan was drawn up in 
the form of a circular, dated May 14, 1743^ when he 
was 37 years old, and sent to all who had any reputation 
for science in the several colonies ; and in the spring of 
1744, the first organization was effected. In a letter, 
dated on the 5th of April, 1744, to Cadwallader Golden, 
then the most distinguished man in the colony of New 
York, for scientific attainments, Franklin, after stating 
that the society was actually formed and had already 
had several meetings, gives a list of the original mem- 
bers, with the department of knowledge to which each 
was expected to pay especial attention. 

It can hardly fail to gratify the reader of the present 
time, to see who were considered as in the van of sci- 
ence at that early day ; and as the list is short, we copy 
it. Dr. Thomas Bond, a jjhysician, stands first on the 
roll, and was to give his more particular attention to in- 
quiries and communications on medical subjects ; John 
Bartram, for botany ; Thomas Godfrey, for mathemat- 
ics ; Samuel Rhoades, for mechanics ; William Parsons, 



FIRST PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 247 

for geography ; Dr. Phineas Bond, for natural philoso- 
phy ; Thomas Hopkinson, was president of the society : 
William Coleman, treasurer, and Benjamin Franklin, 
secretary. To these, who were resident in Pennsylvania* 
had been added, prior to the date of the letter just men- 
tioned, Mr. Alexander, of New York; Mr. Morris, chief 
justice, and Mr. Home, colonial secretary, of New 
Jersey ; and Mr. Martin and Mr. John Coxe, private 
citizens of Trenton, in the same colony. Several emi- 
nent men of Virginia, Maryland, and the New England 
colonies, were expected to join, as soon as they should 
learn that the society was actually in operation ; but 
their names are not stated. 

This association, though its commencement seemed to 
promise considerable activity, pretty soon began to lan- 
guish. One or two associations, more or less resembling 
it, were organized in the course of subsequent years, 
when, finally in 1768, the original society, and the Medi- 
cal Society of Philadelphia, after considerable negotia- 
tion, merged themselves in a single body under the title 
of " The American Philosophical Society held at Phila- 
delphia for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge." This 
consolidation took eifect in January, 1769 : and the insti- 
tution thus formed has continued to the present day. 

This association, projected in 1743, but not actually 
organized till the spring of 1744, was the first movement 
of the kind, for promoting philosophical inquiry, in the 
colonies. In the latter year Franklin published a valu- 
able tract on fire-places. Two years before, in 1742, he 
had devised the plan of the stove which became so cele- 
brated under his name ; and after testing its qualities to 
his entire satisfaction, he had made a present of the pat- 
tern and the whole property in it, to his friend Robert 
Grace, who was the owner of a furnace for casting iron- 
wares. To enhance the value of the gift, by extend- 



248 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ing the sale of the sto'^ Franklin drew up the paper 
referred to, and published it, in 1744. It is entitled 
** An Account of the New-Invented Pennsylvania Fire- 
places ;" and may be found in the 6th volume of his 
works, as edited by Dr. Sparks. It is interesting and in- 
structive, both for its historical details respecting the more 
important methods of warming houses in the principal 
countries of Europe, and for its explanation of the prin- 
ciples on which fuel is economized, and health and com- 
fort secured by the manner in which heat is produced 
and distributed. 

Franklin's stove was planned upon the soundest prin- 
ciples ; and for diffusing a pleasant, uniform, healthful 
warmth, especially in the parlor and the study, with 
wood for fuel, we do not believe it has been surpassed, 
if equalled, when constructed and set up in full accord- 
ance with the plan and directions of its inventor; for it 
should be observed that the stoves, which, under his 
name, have been generally used, since the present centu- 
ry came in, have not, in truth, been Franklin's ; the dis- 
tinctive and most valuable part of the genuine stove, (the 
air-box, or space between the plate immediately back of 
the fire, and the real back-plate of the stove,) having 
been wholly omitted, and the peculiar mode of setting it 
up, disregarded, so that little else than a mere shell of 
the original Pennsylvania fire-place, has been retained. 

Though the invention of this valuable fire-place was 
strictly original with Franklin, and his title to an exclu- 
sive property in it was of the most valid kind, yet he re- 
fused to secure it to himself; assigning, as his reason, 
to those who urged him to do so, that " as we enjoy 
great advantages from the inventions of others, we should 
be glad of an opportunity to serve others, by any inven- 
tions of our own ; and this we should do freely and 
generously." 



PATENT-RIGHTS PUBLIC DEFENCE. 249 

This reason is characteristic of the liberal sj^irit of the 
author, and consistent with the whole tenor of his life ; 
but it should not be used as an argument against the 
practice of those who secure to themselves, for their own 
benefit and that of their families, an exclusive property, 
for a certain period, in their own inventions. Nothing, 
surely, can belong to an individual man, considered dis- 
tinctly from other men, so exclusively and absolutely, as 
the faculties of mind and his time. No property, there- 
fore, can be so entirely and truly his own, as that which 
he creates, by emjiloying his time and faculties in apply- 
ing his knowledge to important practical uses ; and no 
private emolument can be more just and honorable than 
that, which a man derives from his contributions to the 
common benefit of society. 

Besides these exertions in the cause of education, sci- 
ence, and domestic comfort, Franklin made a strenuous, 
and to a very important extent, a successful effort, to ef- 
fect a military organization of the able-bodied population 
of the province, for its defence against both invasion on 
the sea-board, and the inroads of the Indian tribes on 
the frontiers. The action of the provincial government, 
on this important subject, had been controlled by the 
Quakers. As the majority of the provincial Assembly 
usually consisted of members of that denomination, and 
Buch as voted with them, all endeavors to procure a gen- 
eral and permanent act for embodying and training an 
efficient militia, had failed. 

Great Britain had, for several years, been engaged in 
a war with Spain, with which country France had now 
at last taken part. When it is recollected that France 
was then, not only in fall possession of the Canadas, but 
that, by means of a succession of posts, extending from 
the mouth of the St. Lawrence, along the valley of that 
river, the great lakes, the Ohio, and the Mississippi, to 



250 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

New Orleans, she cov^Pcl and commanded the whole 
vast frontier of the British settlements ; that those posts 
were trading stations, as well as military positions, and, 
in connection with a numerous band of Jesuit missiona- 
ries, gave her an unrivalled influence with most of the 
more powerful Indian tribes, it will be readily seen 
that the dangers to which the colonies were exposed, 
were well calculated to fill the breasts of reflecting men, 
even the most resolute and firm, with the liveliest anx- 
iety. 

As it had been found impracticable to obtain a law 
for a general military organization, Franklin proposed 
to effect as extensive an embodiment of force as possible 
by voluntary subscription. To prepare the way for 
such a step, by pressing the subject upon the public 
mind, he wrote and published a pamphlet entitled " Plain 
Truth." In this he set forth the defenceless condition 
of the province, and the necessity and duty of combina- 
tion and discipline, in as impressive language as he 
could command ; anticipated and answered objections, 
particularly such as had been more commonly urged 
among the people at large ; and announced that articles 
of association would shortly be presented for general 
subscription, to serve as a basis for the enrolment, organ- 
ization, and training, of such of the peoi^le as should 
come forward, in this way, for the patriotic purpose of 
defending the community from aggression and injury. 

The effect of this appeal to the people was surprising 
and decisive. The articles of association were promptly 
called for; and having settled the main points, in consul- 
tation with a few judicious friends, Franklin drew them 
up in due form, and gave notice of a meeting, at which 
they would be presented for subscription. The meeting 
was well attended ; numerous printed copies, with pens 
and inkstands, were distributed among the assemblage to 



VOLUNTEER MILITIA. 251 

expedite the signing ; and, after Franklin had read the 
articles, and made a few remarks on their scope and ob- 
ject, they were, as he relates, " eagerly signed, not the 
least objection being made." 

Upon collecting the several papers, after the meeting, 
twelve hundred subscriptions were counted up as the re- 
sult of this first movement, in Philadelphia only ; and 
the articles being distributed throughout the province, 
the number of men who thus voluntarily pledged them- 
selves to unite for the common defence, rose to U2:)ward 
often thousand. They all equipped themselves as prompt- 
ly as circumstances permitted ; formed themselves into 
companies and regiments, under officers of their own 
choice, and turned out weekly to drill. The women, ev- 
er at least as ready as their brethren to obey the call of 
patriotism, in their own sphere of action, furnished the 
respective corps with the requisite banners, which were 
handsomely emblazoned with bearings chiefly devised 
by Franklin ; who was elected colonel of the Philadel- 
phia regiment, in the first instance; but not deeming 
himself particularly qualified for military command, he 
modestly declined the office, suggesting that a Mr. Law- 
rence, (his individual name is not given,) should be cho- 
sen instead, which was accordingly done. 

Much alarm had been created, about this time in Phil- 
adelphia, by the appearance of a Spanish privateer in 
Delaware bay. Franklin's next proposal was, therefore, 
to construct a battery at a suitable point on the bank of 
the Delaware river below the city ; and to defray the 
expense of the work he prepared a scheme for a lottery. 
The plan was promptly adopted and the battery erected, 
with a stronor breastwork of loQ^-cribs filled with earth. 
A few cannon, procured at Boston, were placed in the 
battery ; but more being wanted, orders were sent for 
them to London, and application was also made to the 



252 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Proprietaries of the province for aid. But as considera- 
ble time must elapse before these measures could take 
effect, a committee of four, Franklin being one, was de- 
spatched, on behalf of the military association, to New 
York, for the purpose of obtaining the necessary ord- 
nance, as a loan, to be returned when their own supply 
should be received. This mission resulted in obtaining 
eighteen guns. *' They were fine cannon ;" says Frank- 
lin, '* eighteen-pounders, with their carriages, which were 
soon transported and mounted on our batteries, where 
the association kept a nightly guard, while the war last- 
ed," Franklin taking his own turn duly, " as a common 
soldier." 

The public spirit, energy, and capacity, displayed by 
Franklin, in these emergencies, gained him the respect 
and confidence of the governor and council ; and they 
advised with him whenever their co-operation with the 
association was deemed expedient. At his suggestion, 
too, they proclaimed a public fast, to be accompanied by 
appropriate religious services, throughout the colony. 
As this was the first event of the kind, however, in Penn- 
sylvania, Franklin, as a New-Englander and familiar 
with the usages on such occasions, was requested to pre- 
pare the proclamation. He accordingly drew up one, 
and it was sent throughout the province, both in German 
and English. The clergy availed themselves of the pro- 
mulgation of this document, to commend the association 
to the approbation of the people and urge them to join 
it ; and it would soon, probably, have embraced most of 
the population able to bear arms, except the Quakers, 
had not peace shortly superseded this appeal to their 
patriotism. 

Some of Franklin's personal friends felt apprehensive 
that the leading part he took, in the military arrangements 
mentioned, would deprive him of the favor he enjoyed 



HIS RULE AS TO PUBLIC OFFICE, 253 

among the Quakers, who always had a strong majority 
in the provincial Assembly; and that he would thus lose 
the clerkship of that body. A certain young man, who 
was exceedingly desirous to be clerk himself, told Frank- 
lin, one day, that it had been determined to reject him, 
when the choice of that officer should come up, at the 
next session ; and advised him to decline beinof a candi- 
date, rather than suffer the mortification of a defeat. 
Franklin's reply to his adviser, whose motive he well un- 
derstood, was quite characteristic. He said to him at 
once, that he liked the rule, adopted by a man he had 
read of, neither to seek nor refuse office ; and that he 
should act on the same rule, with only a single addition ; 
for, said he — "I shall never ask, never refuse, nor ev- 
er resign an office ;" adding that, if the Assembly intend- 
ed to give the clerkship to another, thqy should ** first 
take it" from him, as he would not, by resigning it, fore- 
go his ** right of some time or other making reprisal on 
his adversaries," 

The above answer disposed of his competitor, and at 
the next session Franklin was again made clerk without 
opposition; for, while he had discharged the duties of 
that office, in the most correct and acceptable manner, 
the majority were too shrewd to reject him for the sole 
reason that he had exerted himself, most efficiently, in 
providing for the defence and safety of the community. 
Besides, it was by no means certain, and subsequent oc- 
currences fully showed the fact, that even the non-com- 
batant Quakers really disliked the military measures in 
question, so long as they were not personally required 
to take part in them. Franklin, indeed, states that, al- 
though they were opposed to offensive war, yet he found 
** a much greater number of them than he could have 
imagined," unequivocally in favor of such measures as 
were neccessary for defence ; and that of the " many 

22 



254 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

pamphlets, j^ro and co^^ublished on the subject," some 
which were in favor of defensive preparations, were writ- 
ten " by good Quakers." 

These views, on the part of that class of people, were 
still further manifested by the proceedings of the fire- 
company, to which Franklin belonged, but which con- 
sisted mostly of Quakers, a majority of whom, on a mo- 
tion made by him, voted to appropriate the company's 
surplus funds, amounting to sixty pounds, to the pur- 
chase of tickets in the lottery formed to defray the cost 
of the battery, already mentioned, for the defence of the 
city. 

The truth is, the non-combatant principles of the Qua- 
kers gave them, in the then existing exigencies of the 
province, not a little embarrassment, especially whenev- 
er application was made to the Assembly, on behalf of 
the Crown, for grants of money, for the public defence. 
The result of such applications was, generally, a grant 
of the sums needed, but so worded as to evade an ex- 
plicit and direct appropriation for warlike purposes. 
The usual form of the grant was " for the king's use," 
without particularizing the objects for which the money 
was to be actually expended. 

The form mentioned served well enough, when the 
call came directly from the king ; but in other cases a 
different phraseology was requisite, and the selection of 
it was occasionally marked by as much humor as shrewd- 
ness. When for instance, a request came from one of 
the New England colonies for a supply of 'powder , the 
Assembly of Pennsylvania would not vote money for the 
purchase of the black-grained munition of war, under its 
own distinctive name of gun-jyowdcr ; but they voted 
three thousand pounds, to be subject to the governor's 
order, ** for the purchase of bread, flour, wheat, or other 
grain.'' To tease the Quaker majority of the Assembly, 



COMMITMENT TO OPINIONS. 255 

the Governor was urged in Council to refuse the gi*ant, 
as not pursuant to his call ; but he well understood the 
equivocal term, and as it was no time for trifling, he drew 
the money ; and though the grain he bought with it, was 
not a kernel of it wheat, but the " other grain" exclu- 
sively, no complaint was made by the Assembly. 

Another anecdote will serve further to illustrate this 
mode of enabling the patriotism of the Quakers to get 
the advantage of their passive resistance, and will give 
also a taste of Franklin's humor and ingenuity. When 
his proposition was pending, in the fire-company, to ap- 
ply its surplus funds to the arming of the battery for the 
defence of the city, he was prepared, in order to quiet, 
if needful, any non-combatant scruples about voting to 
buy cannon, to amend his motion so as to apply the funds 
to the purchase oi fire-engines, in which category every 
sort of fire-arms might unquestionably be classed. 

In some remarks on these embarrassments of the 
Quakers, Franklin intimates that they might and prob- 
ably would have avoided them, had they not been so ful- 
ly committed, in print before the world, to their doctrine 
of the unlawfulness of force in all cases ; and he takes 
the occasion to question the wisdom of such absolute com- 
mitment to particular opinions, as constituting a need- 
less impediment to the admission of new convictions of 
truth and duty, even when clearly presented to the un- 
derstanding, by further reflection, in the light derived 
from fuller experience, and more comprehensive views 
of the various obligations of civil society. To furnish 
an example of what he deemed " a more prudent course 
of conduct," he relates an interesting conversation he 
once had with one of the founders of the sect of Dunkers. 

The man referred to, Michael WefFare by name, hav- 
ing complained of slanderous representations of the prin- 
ciples and practices of the sect, Franklin remarked that 



256 LIFE OP IJENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

such was the usual fate of new sects, and suggested that, 
to put down the calumnies, they should publish their ar- 
ticles of faith and rules of discipline. Welfare replied, 
that they had once thought of doing so, but had conclu- 
ded otherwise, for the reason given by him substantially 
as follows. When they first formed their society, God 
had been pleased, as they believed, to give them light 
enough to see that some doctrines, which they had deem- 
ed truths, were errors, and that others, once deemed er- 
rors, were truths; that further light had been, by degrees, 
imparted to them ; and that, as they were not now sure 
that their spiritual knowledge was perfect, they feared to 
put their faith in print, lest their brethren, and still more 
their successors, should feel so bound and restricted 
thereby, as to reject new lights, and thus perhaps arrest 
their advancement in truth. 

Franklin commends the modesty of the Dunkers, and 
adds the remark, made in the latter part of his life, that 
the Quakers, to escape annoyances of the kind mention- 
ed, were withdrawing from public employments, " choos- 
ing rather to quit their fower, than their pri7iciples ;^* 
certainly an honorable choice. 



NEW PARTNERSHIP. 257 



CHAPTER XX. 

ACADEMY NEW PARTNERSHIP PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 

PUBLIC EMPLOYMENTS INDIAN TREATY HOSPITAL 

CITY STREETS POST-OFFICE ALBANY CONVEIVTION 

PLAN FOR NEW COLONIES PROPRIETARY GOVERNORS 

AID TO MASSACHUSETTS. 

The war spoken of in the last chapter, having been 
terminated, in 1748, by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
the raiUtary association, which Franklin had taken so 
leading and efficient a part in organizing, dissolved with 
the return of peace ; and he was enabled to turn to more 
congenial pursuits. About the same period he gave him- 
self a still freer control of his own time and occupations, 
by forming a partnership, with a very competent and 
prudent man, who had worked for him several years, by 
the name of David Hall, who took the entire charge of 
the business of both the printing-office and the bookstore. 

Being thus released from the immediate and constant 
care of his business Franklin now again bent his efforts, 
with renewed zeal, to promote the cause of sound edu- 
cation, by the establishment of an academy. Associating 
with himself some of the most earnest and efficient fa- 
vorers of the cause, of whom the Junto supplied its full 
share, he then drew up his plan, which he entitled " Pro- 
posals relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylva- 
nia," and placed it in the hands of the leading men of 
the community. When time had been allowed for the 
consideration of the subject, he started a subscription ; 
22* 



258 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

and by judiciously making the sums subscribed, payable 
in five annual instalments, the amount obtained, as stated 
by Peters, the secretary of the Proprietaries, was " up- 
ward of 6£S00 a year." In doing this, Franklin, though 
his principal associates well understood the extent of his 
agency, yet kept himself, in accordance with a rule he 
had adopted, as much as he could in the back-ground ; 
and when the " Proposals," which were first distributed 
in manuscript, were printed, he spoke of them in some 
prefatory remarks, as emanating from several public- 
spirited gentlemen, at whose instance they were printed, 
for more convenient and general distribution. 

The subscri]3tion being closed, and twenty-four trus- 
tees elected, two of the number, Franklin and the pro- 
vincial attorney-general, Francis, being appointed a com- 
mittee for the purpose, prepared a plan for the organi- 
zation and management of the academy, which was 
adopted, and the school was put in operation. The pu- 
pils soon became so numerous, that the house first occu- 
pied was found too small for their accommodation. It 
will be recollected that some years previous, under the 
excitement produced by Whitefield's preaching, a large 
Duilding had been erected for public worship, irrespec- 
tive of sectarian distinctions ; and that the property and 
care of the house and ground, had been vested in a legal- 
ly constituted board of trustees. The feeling which led 
to that step having passed away, and the trustees being 
embarrassed and annoyed by the debt it had created, 
Franklin, who was one of those trustees, as well as a 
member of the academy board, suggested the expedien- 
cy of ceding the whole of that property, to the trustees 
of the academy, for the use of the new school. After 
some negotiation this measure was effected, on the con- 
ditions that the trustees of the academy, should pay the 
debt for the house and ground ; keep open a large hall 



THE ACADEMY PHILOSOPHICAL PURSUITS. 259 

for occasional preaching without distinction of sect ; and 
maintain therein a free school for the instruction of poor 
children in reading, writing, and arithmetic. This ar- 
rangement being consummated in legal form, the trus- 
tees of the academy discharged the outstanding meeting- 
house debt, and being put in full possession of the prop- 
erty, forthwith converted the building into a structure 
of two stories, with suitable apartments for the respec- 
tive schools ; and a little additional ground being pur- 
chased to complete the requisite accommodations thither 
the academy was transferred. 

The immediate superintendence of this whole affair, 
including the alterations made in the building, the pur- 
chase of materials, the hiring of workmen, and all other 
details, devolved on Franklin. Some years after, the 
academy board w^as regularly incorporated by a charter 
from the provincial government; their funds were largely 
augmented by contributions from England, as well as by 
donations of land from the Proprietaries and from the 
provincial assembly; and this academy subsequently ex- 
panded into the university of Pennsylvania. 

Having acquired *' a sufficient though moderate for- 
tune," as he termed it, Franklin, in arranging his private 
affairs, as already mentioned, intended and expected thus 
to enable himself to devote his life mainly to those literary 
pursuits, and especially to those philosophical researches, 
to which he was so strongly drawn by his predominant 
tastes and the bent of his genius, and in which he had al- 
ready made no unimportant advances. To say nothing 
here of his numerous pieces on the economy of private 
life and the prudent conduct of private affairs, which had 
ranked him, while yet in middle age, among the most 
sagacious observers of his own time or any other ; and 
to pass over various well-considered tracts, filled with 
enlightened views on the rightful foundation and objects 



260 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

of all just government,^i the freedom of speech and of 
the press, and other topics connected with political and 
civil rights and obligations ; he had indicated, as early as 
1737, the wide range of his studies, in an instructive 
paper, in which he collected all the valuable observations 
of ancient and modern writers on the causes and chief 
phenomena of earthquakes, followed, at intervals in the 
few years immediately succeeding, by experiments and 
speculations on various points of animal physiology and 
other physical questions, discussed in a continually-grow- 
ing correspondence with the leading scientific men of 
that day. 

In 1747, besides his important pamphlet, entitled 
" Plain Truth," relating, as heretofore noticed, to the 
defenceless condition, not only of Philadelphia, but of 
the province generally, and his arduous, patriotic, and 
successful labors in effecting the military organization to 
which that pamphlet led the way, he not only wrote his 
interesting paper explaining the origin and course of the 
northeast storms of our Atlantic coast, but, as early as 
July of this same year, in his correspondence with his 
scientific friend, Peter Collinson, of the Royal Society of 
London, he announced to the world for the first time, 
and on the authority of experiments devised and con- 
ducted by himself, what he describes as " the wonderful 
effect of pointed bodies, both in draiuing off and tlirow- 
ing off the electrical fire ;" and in the same communica- 
tion he also announced the important discovery of the 
opposite electrical conditions of bodies, indicated by the 
terms plus and minus, or positive and negative, on the 
basis of which he gave, in the succeeding September, 
the explanation of the phenomena of the Leyden jar, 
or as he usually termed it, the Leyden bottle, which had 
previously baffled and perplexed the philosophers of 
Europe. 



i 



ELECTRICAL PERFORMANCES. 261 

In the following year, (1748), he further analyzed the 
electrical hottle by a long series of ingenious exper- 
iments upon it, showing its true electrical condition un- 
der all circumstances, in relation to the substance or in- 
ternal parts of the glass itself, its surfaces, its coatings, 
and its whole action. Among other applications, more- 
over, of electrical agency he applied it as a motive pow- 
er, for the production of useful practical results, to a 
revolving apparatus of his own contrivance, which he 
called the electric jack, after the machine once in gen- 
eral use for roasting meat. In the communication to Mr. 
Collinson, (written apparently late in the spring, though 
the month is not named,) in which he gives the details 
of these investigations and results, he closes with the 
following notice of a very remarkable pleasure party — 
a sort of electrical pic-nic — arranged and enjoyed, 
doubtless, with rare zest, by himself and some of his 
philosophical friends. 

" The hot weather coming on," says he, *' when elec- 
trical experiments are not so agreeable, it is proposed to 
put an end to them for this season, somewhat humorous- 
ly, in a party of pleasure on the banks of the Skuylkill. 
Spiiits, at the same time, are to be fired by a spark sent 
from side to side, through the river, without any other 
conductor than the water ; an experiment which we some 
time since performed, to the amazement of many. A 
turkey is to be killed for our dinner, by an electric shock, 
and roasted by the electrical jack, before a fire kindled 
by the electrical hottle ; when the healths of all the fa- 
mous electricians of England, Holland, France, and 
Germany, are to be drank in electrified bumpers under 
the discharge of guns from an electrical battery."* 

* The eleclrijied bumper, lie describes as a small, thin, glass tumbler, 
nearly filled with wine, and electrified like the bottle. This, when brought 
to the lips, gives a slight shock, if the beard be shaved closely, so as to 
present no points, and the moist breath be not breathed upon the liquor. 



262 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

In 1749, moreover, ma paper on "thunder-gusts," he 
began to broach his theory of the identity of electricity 
and lightning, (suggesting in the same paper the idea 
that the Northern Lights may be electrical phenomena,) 
and in 1750 he propounded, as one of the consequences 
and proofs of that identity, the efficacy and utility of 
pointed conductors, now commonly called lightning-rods, 
for protection against lightning. Though he did not 
actually make his renowned experiment with the kite, 
till June, 1752, yet all the principles, on which that ex- 
periment proceeded, had been evolved in the three pre- 
ceding years, beginning, as already stated, in 1749. In- 
deed, in a paper detailing experiments and observations 
made in 1749, but not communicated to Mr. Collinson, 
till the next season, (for correspondence across the At- 
lantic was then a matter of months, not of weeks and 
days,) under cover of a note dated the 29th of July, 
1750, Franklin had gone so far as to describe a method, 
(placing on some tower, or other elevated station, a long 
iron rod, with its foot insulated in a mass of resin, and 
its pointed top rising singly above surrounding objects 
into the air,) by which the truth of \i\s theory, already 
expounded by him on the evidence of a long train of 
experiments made by himself and previously communi- 
cated, might be demonstrated beyond all doubt or deni- 
al ; and it was in fact, by pursuing exactly the method 
thus proposed, that the first European attempt to ascer- 
tain the great truth in question, was made and was suc- 
cessful. 

The communication above referred to, containing the 
experiments and reasonings out of which the proposed 
method grew, though read before the Royal Society in 
London, was deemed by the more forward and control- 
ling members of that institution, to be too unimportant, 
not to say frivolous and extravagant, to be published 



ELECTRICITY AND LIGHTNING IDENTICAL. 263 

among their transactions. Indeed, the supposition that 
the fire, snapping and sparkling from a small glass bot- 
tle, and ground out of a small glass cylinder turned by a 
hand-craiik, could possibly be identical with the elemen- 
tal lightning, was, says Mitchell, a member of the soci- 
ety, in a letter to Franklin, ** laughed at by the connois- 
seurs." Fothergill, Collinson, and a few others, however, 
thought differently, and procured the publication of the 
papers bearing directly on the question, in a separate pam- 
phlet, which was soon translated into the French and 
other languages of continental Europe. One of those 
pamphlets being read by Buffon, Dalibard, and other 
philosophical inquirers in Paris, they had a series of 
Franklin's experiments, as he had described them, per- 
formed by M. De Lor, one of their number ; and these 
made so strong an impression upon them, that they de- 
termined forthwith to put the hypothesis of identity to 
the test, precisely and avowedly in the manner suggested 
by its acknowledged author. Dalibard, who set up his 
rod, forty feet in length, on the heights of Marly, a sub- 
urb of Paris, was lucky enough to obtain from the clouds, 
the earliest answer to the great question put to them. 
This was on the 10th of May, 1752. On the 18th of 
the same month, the same answer was obtained by De 
Lor, upon the roof of his own house in Paris, with a rod 
which lifted its sharp point to the height of ninety feet 
above its base ; and the same results were obtained in 
speedy succession, by similar means, in various other 
places on the continent of Europe. In one instance, the 
experimenter, (Professor Richman, who had early ac- 
quired a high reputation in philosophy,) while making 
this grand and bold experiment at St. Petersburgh, in 
Russia, through some lack of care in managing it, was 
killed by an unexpected discharge from his rod. 

Franklin would himself have put his plan, as above 



264 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

described, in executi^lPwitb the first opportunity after 
conceiving it, had he possessed the means of doing so. 
It was while waiting for some such means, (which, as it 
would seem, from some expressions relating to this topic, 
he had reason to expect would soon be furnished in Phil- 
adelphia,) that the simple yet sublime experiment with 
the kite occurred to him ; and, without having heard, or, 
indeed, having had time, by many weeks, to hear a word 
of what had been done in Paris, pursuant to his previous 
suggestions, he availed himself of the first opportunity 
presented by a mass of gathering thunder-clouds, in 
June, 1752, to send up his kite, with its sharp-pointed wire 
projecting some twelve inches or more beyond its ver- 
tex, which brought the lightning down to him in triumph, 
demonstrated the great truth he had already di'awn from 
his inductions, and shed unfading splendor on his name. 
Besides all this, Franklin, as he wrote to the celebrated 
Cadwallader Golden, with whom he was in constant cor- 
respondence, had, in 1751, by uniting several large elec- 
trified jars in one battery, given such intensity to the 
electric discharge as to melt steel needles, reverse the 
poles of the magnetic needle, give magnetism and polar- 
ity to needles previously destitute of them, and ignite 
dry gunpowder. He had also asserted the unlimited 
capability of accumulation of the electric force, aflBrming 
that, by enlarging the battery of jars as above indicated, 
the greatest effects of lightning yet known, might be 
surpassed ; and in another letter to Mr. Golden, dated 
the 23d of April, 1752, he had questioned the correct- 
ness of the received opinion, that the light of the sun 
proceeds from it in successive particles actually traversing 
space in the form of rays ; and propounded, in opposition 
to that opinion, the query whether all the phenomena of 
light might not be better solved " by supposing univer- 
sal space filled with a subtile elastic fluid, which, when 




Franklin drawing down the Lightning. 



PUBLIC EMPLOYMENTS. 2(35 

at rest, is not visible, but whose mhrations affect that fine 
sense in the eye, as those of air do the grosser organs 
of the ear ]" 

Such were the pursuits, with their strong attractions, 
for the sake of which, Franklin had relieved himself 
from the engrossment of his private affairs, and as he 
hoped, from the drudgery of public business ; and, 
having enlarged his means of philosophical investiga- 
tion with additional apparatus, he was bent on giving 
himself thereto, with renewed ardor and a more exclu- 
sive devotion than ever. 

But the interest which he had manifested in the de- 
fence of the colony, the leading part he had taken in the 
measures adopted for that end, and the public spirit and 
ability he had displayed, served more and more to fix 
upon him the public attention and win the general con- 
fidence ; and now that he was regarded as a man of lei- 
sure, the demand for his services in public affairs v/as 
continually increasing. The governor commissioned him 
as a justice of the peace; he was chosen a member of 
the common council of the city; and, shortly after, was 
elected a member of the provincial assembly. This last- 
named position seems to have pleased him most, not 
only as being most congenial to his qualifications, but as 
presenting a broader field of action and of usefulness ; 
though all of them, as being unsolicited testimonies of 
public respect and confidence, could not be otherwise 
than gratifying. The conscientiousness, which strongly 
marked his character, and regulated his conduct in his 
public employments as well as in his private transactions, 
was well exemplified by his course in reference to his 
office as a magistrate. After taking his seat in court, 
a few times, for the hearing of causes, perceiving that 
his knowledge of law was not sufficiently extended and 
exact to enable him to discharge his duties as a judge, 
23 



2Q6 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

in that thorough mailer which alone could satisfy his 
ideas of their importance, he gradually withdrew from 
them, and devoted himself more engrossingly to the 
business of the assembly and the general affairs of the 
province. 

In 1749, he was appointed one of the commissioners, 
on the part of the province, to make a treaty with the 
Indians. The meeting for this purpose was held at Car- 
lisle. The number of Indians in attendance being large, 
to avoid disturbance and bring the negotiation to a speedy 
and amicable conclusion, no spirituous liquor was per- 
mitted to be distributed till the treaty was finished. Im- 
mediately after, however, the red-men held a powow, 
and all of them got drunk. When the powow was over, 
though the principal chiefs showed some tokens of 
shame, yet they defended themselves on the ground that 
the Great Spirit made everything for a particular use, 
and to that use it should be put; that when he made 
rum he said, " Let this be for the Indians to get drunk 
with," and that it must be so. The defence was as valid, 
perhaps, as any yet urged by the white man to this point. 

About this time, Dr. Thomas Bond, one of Franklin's 
intimate friends, proposed the establishment of a hospital 
for the sick poor, whether inhabitants of the province or 
strangers ; and made an earnest effort to procure sub- 
scriptions for the purpose. Meeting with little success, 
however. Dr. Bond came to Franklin to engage him in 
the undertaking, telling him that he was the only man 
who could insure the accomplishment of the project, 
inasmuch as almost every person to whom he applied, 
inquired whether Franklin had been consulted, and what 
he thought of the plan. Upon learning Dr. Bond's 
views, and being convinced that the proposed institution 
would be useful, Franklin became a subscriber, and co- 
operated zealously in promoting it. Before making any 



II 



A HOSPITAL POUNDED. 267 

personal application for other subscriptions, however, he 
resorted to his usual mode of preparing the way for such 
applications, by explaining the plan to the public in 
print ; and when the people generally had thus been led 
to an intelligent consideration of the subject, subscrip- 
tions were more freely made. 

But it soon became evident that the aid of the as- 
sembly would be needed ; and a petition for such aid 
was circulated, which Franklin took charge of. The 
country members were at first averse to the petition, 
alleging that the benefits of the institution would accrue 
only to the inhabitants of the city, and that the funds, 
therefore, should be wholly supplied by them. Frank- 
lin, however, obtained leave to introduce a bill, so drawn 
as to make the proposed grant conditional; that is to 
say, if the sum of two thousand pounds should be raised 
by private subscription, then a like sum should be drawn 
from the provincial treasury. This condition had a two- 
fold operation in favor of the proposed institution ; for 
while it secured the passage of the bill by obtaining the 
votes of those, who did not believe the condition would 
be met, but, who wished to appear liberal, it served also 
as a powerful motive for private subscriptions, which soon 
rose to the required amount and gave effect to the grant. 
The hospital thus established was duly organized in 
1751, and has proved a valuable institution. 

An anecdote indicating something of Franklin's pru- 
dence in husbanding his influence, as well as the extent 
of it, may be related in this connection. The Rev. Gil- 
bert Tennent applied to him for his aid in procuring 
funds by subscription to build a meeting-house for a new 
congregation, formed chiefly of the followers of White- 
field. Franklin, deeming it unwise and improper to be 
continually pressing people for money, even for laudable 
objects, declined ; as he did, also, the further request to 



268 LIFF, OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

furnish a list of those persons whom he had found ready 
and hberal givers, and whom, for that very reason, he 
would not single out for annoyance. Mr. Tennent then 
asked his advice as to the course he should pursue. 
With this request Franklin promptly complied, by tel- 
ling him to apply first to such persons as he knew would 
give something; next to such as he considered doubtful, 
showing them the list of those who had already sub- 
sciibed ; and, finally, to those of whom he now expected 
not/ling, for he might be mistaken in respect to some of 
them. Mr. Tennent '' laughed," took the advice thank- 
fully, and obtained money enough to build a large and 
handsome edifice. 

About this period Franklin began to agitate the sub- 
ject of paving the streets of Philadelphia. He commenced 
in his usual manner, by explaining in his paper the ad- 
vantages of the plan. The first specimen of the con- 
venience and utility of a pavement was presented at the 
market-place, near which he lived. This seems to have 
been effected by the enterprise of individuals ; and Frank- 
lin himself went through the immediate neighborhood 
and obtained a subscription at every house, for keeping 
the pavement in good condition by having it regularly 
swept. The result of this experiment was so satisfac- 
tory that the desire gradually spread throughout the city 
to have the streets fully paved. This feeling became, in 
the course of three or four years from the time now re- 
ferred to, so rife and urgent, that Franklin, shortly before 
he was sent to England, in 1757, as the diplomatic agent 
of the province, introduced into the assembly a bill for 
paving the city by a general tax. He left for England 
before the bill could be passed ; and when he was gone 
the bill was somewhat changed, though not in his judg- 
ment improved, as to the mode of assessing the tax. 
Another provision, however, which he justly considered 



PAVING AND LIGHTING THE CITY. 269 

a very valuable one, was introduced into the same bill — 
a provision for lighting the streets. This idea, though 
generally attributed to Franklin, originated in fact with 
a private citizen by the name of John Clifford, who had 
for some time had a lamp in front of his own house ; 
and it suggested so forcibly the increased convenience 
and security, which would necessarily result from the 
general lighting of the streets, that the provision for that 
purpose was introduced and adopted as above stated. 

The thorough lighting of the streets of a city is prob- 
ably the most efficient, reliable, and truly economical 
part of every system of protective police; and the credit 
of first suggesting so useful a measure might well be 
coveted by any public-spirited citizen ; and the sponta- 
neous transfer of such credit, therefore, by the man to 
whom, without any agency of his own, it had been erro- 
neously assigned, and with whom it was resting without 
dispute, to the person to whom it justly belonged, was 
unequivocal evidence of honorable feeling. Mr. Clif- 
ford, moreover, had been long dead, when Franklin 
made the explanation in question, which could, therefore, 
have been prompted only by that innate love of truth 
and fair dealing, which was, indeed, a strongly-marked 
trait of his character. There was another merit, how- 
ever, connected with this subject, which belongs to 
Franklin ; and that was the improvement, introduced by 
him, in the form of the street lamp. The one received 
from London, and in use there, was the globe-lamp ; but 
it was so insufficiently ventilated that, when lighted, the 
inner surface soon became thickly coated with lamp- 
black, which materially diminished radiation. This se- 
rious objection was avoided by substituting, on Frank- 
lin's recommendation, a square lamp, with flat panes of 
glass, with a freer access of air at the bottom, and a 
funnel-shaped top to permit the easy escape of smoke. 
23* 



270 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

This lamp not only^^ve a better light, but a broken 
pane could be replaced at much less expense than the 
cost of a new glass globe. 

While on these topics, in regard to which, the course 
of time has been in some respects anticipated a little, we 
may advert to some further suggestions, relating to the 
structure and cleaning of streets, made by Franklin, after 
he became, as provincial agent, a resident again in Lon- 
don, and communicated by him to his warm friend and 
admirer, the celebrated Dr. Fothergill. Among other 
things, he expresses the opinion that, iox narroic streets, 
the transverse slope should be made from the sides to 
the centre, so as to have but one kennel, or gutter ; for 
the reason that, in such streets, the water they collect 
from the rains will be usually sufficient to carry away 
the wash of the surface, if there be only one kennel, but 
not enough, if divided, to cleanse two such kennels ; 
while, at the same time, the sidewalks and their passen- 
gers will be much less exposed to annoyance. He also 
suggested the use of tight-covered carts for carrying 
away the mud and other wet filth ; and the sweeping of 
the streets when dry, as well as when wet, (the former 
of which practices had not yet been adopted in London,) 
but doing it early in the morning, before the opening 
of shops and houses; for all which, in the long dry days 
of summer, in that high northern latitude, the habits of 
the London population allowed ample time, even after 
the morning sun was up, notwithstanding their com- 
plaints of the heavy candle-tax. 

Franklin closes his narration of these matters with the 
remark, that some may deem them too trivial to be worth 
relating. His comment on this view of such things is 
eminently characteristic ; and the lesson of practical 
wisdom which it teaches, will be appreciated by all who 
have formed any tolerably adequate estimate of the value 



IMPORTANCE OF SMALL THINGS POSTOFFICE. 271 

of time, or of the inevitable results of that perpetual flow 
of minute occurrences, small wants, momentary gratifi- 
cations, and petty disappointments, by which the actual 
discipline of character is effected, and ordinary life influ- 
enced for good or for evil. ** Human felicity," says 
Franklin, ** is produced not so much by great pieces of 
good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages 
that occur every day. Thus, if you teach a poor young 
man to shave himself and keej) his razor in order, you 
may contribute more to the happiness of his life than by 
giving him a thousand guineas. This sum may be soon 
spent, leaving only the regret of having foolishly con- 
sumed it ; but in the other case, he escapes the frequent 
vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes 
dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors ; he 
shaves when most convenient to him, and enjoys the 
daily pleasure of its being done with a good instru- 
ment." 

Prior to 1753, Franklin had been employed to exam- 
ine into the affairs of a number of the more important 
colonial postoffices, bring their occupants to an adjust- 
ment of their accounts, and regulate their management. 
This employment he had received from the postmaster- 
general of the colonies ; and upon the death of that offi- 
cer, in the year just mentioned, his functions were con- 
ferred upon Franklin and Colonel William Hunter, of 
Virginia, by a joint commission from the English post- 
master-general. The two American deputies were to 
have six hundred pounds a year between them, provided 
they could raise that sum from the net proceeds of their 
office. The colonial postoflice receipts had never been 
sufficient to pay a shilling of revenue into the English 
treasury ; and to render them productive enough to yield 
the compensation mentioned, various reforms were neces- 
sary, and Franklin immediately set about introducing 



272 lilFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

them. To do this, h(|^ver, demanded, in the outset, 
from the new commissioners, disbursements so consider- 
able that in the first four years the office became indebted 
to them to the amount of nine hundred pounds. But as 
soon as the new arrangements had been in operation 
long enough to produce their proper results, the receipts 
began to increase ; and in a few years they became suffi- 
cient, not only to pay the stipulated salary, but to yield 
the government a revenue, which continued until Frank- 
lin, by his exertions in the cause of the colonies, gave 
such oftence to the British government that the post- 
office was taken from him, and not a penny of revenue 
was received from it afterward. About the begirwiing 
of autumn, in the same year, 1753, being called to Bos- 
ton upon postoffice business. Harvard college conferred 
on him the degree of master of arts, which he had al- 
ready received from Yale. These honors were bestowed 
chiefly for his eminence in natural philosophy, and espe- 
cially his discoveries in electricity. 

In 1754, the tokens of another war with France began 
to be visible ; and as the colonies would not only be in- 
volved in it, as a matter of course, but were likely to 
become one of its principal theatres, the British govern- 
ment directed a convention of colonial deputies to be 
held at Albany, for the purpose of meeting the chiefs of 
the Indian tribes known as the Six Nations, to concert 
measures for the common defence, and to secure, if not 
the active aid of the tribes, at least their friendship and 
neutrality. The order for this convention issued from 
the English board of trade ; and Governor Hamilton, on 
communicating it to the Pennsylvania Assembly, together 
with a recommendation that means should be supplied 
for making suitable presents to the Indians, nominated 
Franklin and the speaker of the Assembly, Isaac Nor- 
ris, to act with John Penn and the provincial secretary, 



CONVENTION AT ALBANY "iN 1754. 273 

Kichard Peters, as the deputies of Pennsylvania to the 
proposed convention. The Assembly promptly assented 
to the nominations, and voted the presents. 

The meeting took place at Albany, on the 19th of 
June, 1754, and consisted of delegates from New Hamp- 
shire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New 
York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. 

Franklin had meditated much on the expediency of 
forming a union of the colonies for certain general pur- 
poses ; and on his way to Albany he sketched a plan of 
such union, which, while in the city of New York, he 
submitted to some of the leading men there, whose ap- 
prol^ation of its general scope and propositions was so 
marked, that he laid it before the convention. 

Though none of the delegates, except those of Massa- 
chusetts, had been instructed to undertake anything more 
than to secure the friendship of the Six Nations, and pro- 
vide for resisting the inroads of the French and such 
tribes as might join them, yet the advantages of a closer 
connection between the colonies had been more or less 
considered in various quarters ; and the delegates of 
Massachusetts had been expressly empowered to enter 
into a closer confederacy for general defence and for 
promoting the common interests of the colonies, in both 
peace and war. This important question being brought 
before the convention, that body, on the 24th of June', 
after voting unanimously that a union of the colonies was 
"necessary for their security and defence," appointed a 
committee to consider and report to the convention a 
plan for such union. 

This committee consisted of Thomas Hutchinson, of 
Massachusetts ; Theodore Atkinson, of New Hampshire; 
William Pitkin, of Connecticut ; Stephen Hopkins, of 
Rhode Island ; William Smith, of New York ; Benjamin 
Franklin, of Pennsylvania; and Benjamin Tasker, of 



274 LIFE*OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Maryland. After delroerating on several schemes of 
union presented, the committee agreed upon Franklin's, 
and on the 28th of June reported it to the convention, 
where, after being debated for twelve successive days, it 
was adopted without opposition on the 11th of July, and 
on the same day the convention broke up. 

The plan thus approved provided for the appointment, 
by the king, of a president-general ; and for the election, 
by the respective colonial Assemblies, of a fairly-appor- 
tioned legislative body, to be called the grand council, to 
meet statedly once a year, and oftener if necessary, but 
whose enactments were to be subject to the assent of 
the president-general. When thus passed, they ^ere 
then to be submitted for final approval to the king in 
council, and were to take effect as soon as approved, or, 
if not disapproved, at the end of three years. 

The powers of the government thus organized inclu- 
ded the making of all treaties with the Indians for the 
purchase of their lands, the regulation of the Indian trade, 
and making war and peace with any of the tribes ; the 
formation of new settlements, and the support, defence, 
and government thereof, until the king should form them 
into distinct colonies with separate charters ; and the 
raising, organization, equipment, and pay, of all military 
forces in the colonies, by land and water, for the common 
defence, and for the protection of the coasting and fron- 
tier trade. To defray the expenses of this general gov- 
ernment, power was given to lay and collect import du- 
ties and internal taxes, and to appoint a treasurer-gen- 
eral, as well as a special treasurer in each colony, if 
deemed expedient ; the moneys thus raised to be depos- 
ited in the respective colonial treasuries, subject only to 
the orders of the general government ; and no payment 
to be made on account of that government, but on the 
joint drafts of both branches, or in pursuance of special 



PLAN OF UNION. 275 

provision in any act of appropriation. All commissioned 
military officers, for service on land or v^^ater, w^ere to 
be nominated by the president-general and approved by 
the grand council ; and all civil officers to be nominated 
by the latter and approved by the former. 

The existing civil and military establishments of the 
respective colonies v^ere to remain unaltered ; and in any 
sudden exigency, each colony might forthwith defend it- 
self w^ithout waiting for the action of the general govern- 
ment ; but all just and proper charges thus incurred were 
to bo reimbursed from the general treasury. Other pro- 
visions were made for carrying the above powers into 
effect ; and the plan was to be submitted to the several 
colonial Assemblies for their adoption, and then to be 
finally ratified by an act of parliament. 

Such were the outlines of the Plan of Union of 1754, 
the distinctive features of which were derived from Frank- 
lin ; and they bore a much nearer resemblance to the 
present constitution of the United States, than the Arti- 
cles of Confederation framed by the Continental Con- 
gress in 1777. In that particular most essential of all to 
its own efficiency, namely, its direct action on the people 
in laying and collecting the taxes and duties necessary 
to the accomphshment of its objects, it proceeded on the 
same principle as the present constitution ; whereas, the 
Confederation of 1777 depended on thirteen separate 
governments for the quotas of revenue necessary to 
maintain the federal authority, which, as soon as the ex- 
ternal pressure of war was removed, was, through that 
dependence, found too weak to sustain itself. Even du- 
ring the war, the chief difficulties arose from that same 
source ; and it was the common feeling of danger, togeth- 
er with the patriotic spirit of the times, far more than 
any real vigor in the government, that enabled the assert- 
ors of American independence to achieve their purposes. 



276 LIFE OB^ BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

But the people of tire colonies in 1754 were not yet 
ripe for so efficient a scheme of government, or so close 
a union. They needed not only some twenty years' more 
experience of the evils of dependence on a foreign pow- 
er, to prepare them fully for independence, but, in ad- 
dition thereto, the still further experience of the weak- 
ness and perils of a loose and inefficient confederation of 
states, to prepare them for actual union and a real gov- 
ernment, endowed with sufficient powers either to insure 
internal order and tranquillity, or to provide for their com- 
mon defence against external aggression, or enable them 
to develoj:); in peace and security, the resources of the 
country. 

The result was that the plan, upon being submitted to 
the several colonial Assemblies, was rejected, chiefly on 
the alleged grounds that it conceded too much to the 
royal prerogative, and would endanger the liberties of 
the colonies ; while the British board of trade, the chan- 
nel through which it was to be presented to the king in 
council, were so jealous of its republican principles, and 
of the powers it conferred upon the colonies, that they 
did not even lay it before his majesty.' G^overnor Ham- 
ilton, of Pennsylvania, when he communicated it to the 
Assembly of that province, did indeed express himself 
in favor of the plan, as being " drawn up with great clear- 
ness and strength of judgment." The Assembly, how- 
ever, through the management of a member, whose name 
is not given, but who was no friend to Franklin, very un- 
fairly took up the plan in the absence of the latter, and 
rejected it without examination. 

In referring to this matter long after, Franklin him- 
self remarks that the opposite reasons for rejecting his 
plan of union led him to consider it as having hit just 
about the true medium : and as nobody at that time en- 
tertained any design of separation, but simply and in 



VIEWS OF THE BRITISH CABINET. 277 

good faith sought the most eftectual and least burden- 
some means of protecting the colonies and promoting 
their best interests, in connection with those of the mother- 
country, he always adhered to the opinion that it would 
have proved happy for both parties if his plan had been 
adopted ; for by such a union, the colonies being enabled 
to defend themselves, no troops from England would 
have been needed, and the pretext for taxing the colonies 
by act of parliament, with its consequences would have 
been avoided. 

In the autumn of 1754, Franklin made a visit of sev- 
eral weeks to the east. During his stay in Boston he 
had various private conferences with Shirley, then gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts, relative not only to the Albany 
plan of union, but to another one contemplated by the 
British cabinet, though not yet publicly broached, under 
which the colonial governors, attended respectively by 
one or more members of their executive councils, were 
to meet, from time to time, to take general measures for 
the defence of the colonies and the protection of their 
trade ; with authority to erect such forts and raise such 
troops as they should judge requisite, the expense of 
which was to be paid, in the first instance, from the im- 
perial treasury, but to be subsequently reimbursed by 
taxes levied upon the colonies by act of parliament. In 
those conferences, the feasibility of some scheme for the 
representation of the colonies in parliament was also con- 
sidered. Franklin, at the request of Governor Shirley, 
put his views on these subjects in writing, in the form 
of letters to the governor. In those letters, the conse- 
quences of the ministerial projects for the taxation and 
government of the colonies are pointed out with pro- 
phetic sagacity as well as eminent ability ; and the great 
principles which ultimately led to American indepen- 
dence are distinctly and boldly asserted. 
24 



278 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

At the period nowl^oken of, France, it will be rec- 
ollected, held the Canadas and Louisiana, and was aim- 
ing to connect those two great colonies by means of set- 
tlements and military posts on the great lakes and prin- 
cipal rivers beyond the Allegany mountains. She thus 
designed to acquire the control of the western Indian 
tribes, monopolize the trade with them, prevent the ex- 
tension of British settlements in that direction, and com- 
mand the entire frontier, as well as the two great routes 
of the future internal commerce of America by the wa- 
ters of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. The suc- 
cess of that policy would have been most injurious, not 
to say fatal, to the English colonies and the whole circle 
of British interests in America. 

No man understood all this better than Franklin, or 
exhibited a wiser foresight in pointing out the means of 
protecting the colonies and placing their interests, and 
with them the true interests of the mother-country in 
America, on the most secure and permanent basis. As 
one of the most effectual of such means, he drew up a 
plan for the settlement of two new colonies west of the 
Alleganies, to occupy the extensive and fertile regions 
on both sides of the Ohio, and between that river, the 
great lakes, and the Mississippi. Franklin's views on 
this subject, though the paper containing them is not 
dated, must have been put into the form now mentioned 
not long after the separation of the Albany convention, 
and, as it is supposed, at the request of Thomas Pow- 
nall, better known at a later day as Governor Pownall, 
who was in Albany during the sitting of the convention, 
and who in 1757 succeeded Shirley as governor of Mas- 
sachusetts. In 1756, Pownall, having returned to Eng- 
land, prepared a memorial on the same subject, which, 
together with the plan drawn up by Franklin and sus- 
tained by the weightiest reasons, he presented to a mem- 



PLAN FOR NEW COLONIES. 279 

ber of the royal family, to be submitted to his majesty in 
council. The war with France, commonly referred to 
in this country, since the Revolution, as " the old French 
war," had, however, commenced the year before, and it 
was then no time to begin the foundation of new settle- 
ments in one of the most exposed regions of America ; 
but if, by the conquest of the Canadas, as the richest 
fruit of that war, some of the reasons for the proposed 
new colonies were rendered less urgent, yet others re- 
mained in fiill force, and were quite sufficient to com- 
mend the scheme to early adoption on the return of 
peace. The scheme did, indeed, ultimately receive the 
sanction of the British cabinet ; but it was at so late a 
period, that the disputes between the colonies and the 
mother-country, then deeply agitating the public mind 
on both sides of the Atlantic, hindered any attempt to 
execute a project which was finally rendered alike need- 
less and impossible by the result of our revolutionary 
war. The broad territories proposed thus to be occu- 
pied and brought under British jurisdiction, have since 
furnished room for seven free, independent, and flourish- 
ing states of this Union ; and their history has more than 
justified Franklin's high estimate of the value of that 
whole region, and of the importance, even at that early 
day, of bringing it under the actual occupation of British 
settlers, and establishing among the native tribes the as- 
cendency of British influence. 

During Franklin's absence on his visit to Boston, as 
already mentioned, in the latter part of 1754, Pennsyl- 
vania received a new governor, Robert Hunter Morris, 
in place of James Hamilton, who, wearied by perpetual 
controversy with the Assembly, had resigned his office. 
Franklin, on his way eastward, had met Mr. Morris in 
New York, where he had just arrived from England with 
his commission. Having been previously well acquaint- 



280 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ed with each other, IVroriis, in the course of conversa- 
tion, asked if he was to expect as quarrelsome and un- 
comfortable an administration as Hamilton's had been. 
" No," said Franklin, ** you may have a very comfortable 
one, if you will only take care not to enter into any dis- 
pute with the Assembly." Morris, with the good humor 
that belonged to his character, replied that he loved dis- 
puting, but that, to show his regard for Franklin's moni- 
tion, he would avoid controversy if possible. 

When Franklin returned, however, and again took his 
seat in the Assembly, he found that body and the gover- 
nor warmly engaged in controversy ; and so it continued 
throughout the administration. Franklin held so promi- 
nent a position in the house as well as in the community 
at large, that he was not only on every committee ap- 
pointed to answer the speeches and messages of the gov- 
ernor, but was uniformly designated by the committees 
to draft the answers on the part of the Assembly. " Our 
answers, as well as his speeches," says Franklin, ** were 
often tart, and sometimes indecently abusive ; and as he 
knew I wrote for the Assembly, one might have im- 
agined that when we met, we could hardly avoid cutting 
throats. But he was so good-natured a man, that no 
personal difference between him and me was occasioned 
by the contest, and we often dined together." 

Pennsylvania, it should be remembered, was what was 
called a proprietary province, William Penn being not 
only the founder and original Proprietary, but the real 
governor, with power to appoint a deputy to reside in 
the province and exercise the functions, pursuant to the 
instructions, of his principal. Upon the death of Wil- 
liam, his sons John, Thomas, and Richard, became as 
well the successors to his political authority as the heirs 
of his private estates in the province ; John, as the eld- 
est of the three, receiving, under the will of their fa- 



PROPRIETARY INSTRUCTIONS. 281 

ther, two shares of the four into which those estates were 
divided, and Thomas and Richard one each. Before the 
time reached in our narrative, however, John had died, 
leaving his estates to Thomas, who thus became pos- 
sessed of three of the shares originally set out by his 
father, while Richard had but one. Thomas, moreover, 
being a more capable and efficient man than Richard, 
and having so much larger pecuniary interests in the 
province, the proprietary authority and influence fell 
chiefly into his hands. The contests between the pro- 
vincial Assembly and the deputy-governors, (commonly 
styled governors, inasmuch as the principals resided for 
the most part in London,) were almost always traceable 
directly to the instructions referred to, and especially in 
relation to taxes ; for when money was needed even for 
the defence of the province, or any other general pur- 
poses, in which the Proprietaries, by reason of their 
great possessions, were far more deeply interested than 
anybody else in the security and growth of the popula- 
tion, they were unjust and mean enough to require their 
governors, under heavy penal bonds, executed at the 
time of receiving their appointments, to refuse their as- 
sent to any act of taxation, unless their own estates were 
expressly exempted. 

Such instructions and requirements, it is easy to see, 
must have excited the liveliest and most just indignation 
in the people of the province and their representatives, 
and have greatly embarrassed the action of the provin- 
cial government. They were, however, sometimes eva- 
ded, as in the following instance, which, besides its in- 
trinsic interest, serves to illustrate the character and 
resources of Franklin's mind too well to be omitted. 

War with France, though not formally proclaimed, 
having in fact commenced, as already intimated, the Mas- 
sachusetts authorities, early in 1755, projected an expe- 
. 24* 



282 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKMN. 

dition to Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, to resist 
the encroachments of the French in that quarter ; and 
they despatched agents to other colonies to ask for aid. 
The agent sent to Pennsylvania was Josiah Quincy, of 
a family distinguished for its patriotic zeal, and one 
of the firmest, ablest, and most enlightened men of that 
time. Knowing Franklin not only as a Bostonian by 
birth, but for his great abilities and high standing in both 
the Assembly and the community, Mr. Quincy presented 
himself first to him, to confer with him on the subject 
of his mission and the best mode of bringing it forward. 
It was concluded that the object of Mr. Quincy's visit 
should be presented in a written communication, drawn 
up in the manner suggested by Franklin, and addressed 
directly to the Assembly. The application was well re- 
ceived, and promptly answered by a vote of the Assem- 
bly granting an aid of ten thousand pounds, to be ex- 
pended in purchasing provisions for the projected expe- 
dition. 

But the bill making this grant included other sums, to 
the amount of fifteen thousand pounds, for the public ser- 
vice, and the whole was to be raised by taxation. When 
the bill, therefore, came before the governor, he, alleging 
as usual his instructions, refused his assent to the bill, 
because it did not exempt the proprietary estates from 
its operation ; and Mr, Quincy's utmost efforts to per- 
suade him to waive his objection were unavailing. In 
this dilemma, Franklin proposed that the money for Mas- 
sachusetts should be raised by means of drafts on the 
trustees of the loan-ofiice, (from which the provincial 
paper-money was issued,) which drafts the Assembly 
had authority to make, independently of the governor; 
but as there was scarcely any money then in the loan- 
office, the drafts should be made payable at the end of 
the year, with five per cent, interest, and secured by a 



AID TO MASSACHUSETTS. 283 

pledge of the fund derived from the interest accruing on 
all the provincial paper-money then in circulation, and 
from the excises then collected. 

These revenues were well known to be more than suf- 
ficient to meet the drafts ; the plan was promptly adopted 
by the Assembly, and the drafts when issued were in 
such high credit that they were not only readily taken in 
direct payment for provisions, but moneyed men, who 
had cash on hand, gladly purchased them as a temporary 
investment, for the sake of the interest upon them, know- 
ing that they could readily sell them again whenever they 
might wish to employ their money in some other way. 
This business being thus successfully accomplished, Mr. 
Quincy addressed an appropriate letter of thanks to the 
Assembly, and, filled with warm and lasting esteem for 
Franklin, returned to Boston, highly gratified with the 
result of his mission. 



284 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



CHAPTER XXI 

franklin's services to BRADDOCK GNADENHUTTEN 

AND THE FRONTIER INCIDENTS AND SENTIMENTS 

NEW MILITARY ORGANIZATION GOVERNOR DENNY 

GOLD MEDAL LORD LOUDON FRANKLIN SENT TO 

ENGLAND AS AGENT FOR THE PROVINCE. 

In the spring of 1755, Franklin signalized his per- 
sonal influence, ability, and public spirit, in another 
branch of the public service. General Braddock, of 
unfortunate memory, had arrived early that spring, at 
Alexandria, Virginia, with two regiments of regular 
troops from England, and had advanced to Frederick- 
town, Maryland, where he encamped to wait for teams, 
which he had sent out agents to collect, in the back set- 
tlements of Maryland and Virginia, for the purpose of 
conveying provisions and other stores for the troops on 
their march to the frontier. The Pennsylvania Assembly 
having some reason to suppose that Braddock had been 
led, by false representations, to misconceive their dispo- 
sition to promote the public service, were anxious to 
disabuse his mind on that point, and for this purpose 
desired Franklin to pay him a visit. He was to go, 
however, not ostensibly as their agent, but as the head 
of the colonial postoffice department, in order to concert 
arrangements for expediting the general's official* corre- 
spondence with the public authorities of the adjacent 
colonies, and the expenses of which they would defray. 

Franklin, who promptly undertook the mission, found 



VISIT TO BRADDOCK. 285 

Braddock at Fredericktown, full of impatience for the 
arrival of the much-needed teams ; and remaining w^ith 
him several days, in constant intercourse, was entirely 
successful in correcting his erroneous impressions re- 
specting the Assembly, by showing him how they had 
acted, and what they were ready to do, in aid of his 
plans. As Franklin was on the point of leaving him, 
Braddock's agents came in, reporting that they had been 
able to engage but twenty-five teams, and that some even 
of that small number were poorly fitted for efficient ser- 
vice. This result surprised the general and his officers. 
They pronounced the expedition wholly impracticable, 
as at least six times the number reported were indispen- 
sable ; and they denounced the ministry for their igno- 
rance in ordering them to a country which could furnish 
no means of conveyance. Franklin took the occasion to 
express his regret that the troops had not been directed 
to Pennsylvania, where almost every farmer kept a wag- 
on. To this remark Braddock eagerly responded, say- 
ing to Franklin, that as he was a man of influence there, 
he could probably procure the necessary teams, and 
pressing him to undertake the business. Upon inquiring 
on what terms the teams were to be raised, Franklin, at 
the general's request, made a brief statement in writing 
of such terms as he deemed reasonable ; and these being 
approved, he was forthwith furnished with the requisite 
authority and instructions, and departed. 

On reaching Lancaster, he issued advertisements, da- 
ted the 25th of April, 1755, stating that he was empow- 
ered to make contracts for one hundred and fifty wagons, 
with four horses and a driver to each ; and for fifteen 
hundred pack-horses ; naming the days on which he 
would be at Lancaster and York to execute such con- 
tracts, and that he had sent his son into Cumberland for 
the same purpose. To give additional efficacy to his 



286 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

advertisements, he j^ubnslied an address to the people, 
appealing to their public spirit, assuring them that the 
proposed service would be neither burdensome nor haz- 
ardous ; that the contracts would put in circulation more 
than thirty thousand pounds, to the great advantage of 
the community ; that the troops sent over the sea for 
their defence, could not act without the means called for, 
which, if not furnished by voluntary contract, would be 
taken by a forced levy, to the great annoyance and in- 
jury of the inhabitants ; and that he had himself no pe- 
cuniary interest in the matter, as he should receive no 
compensation for his services, except only the satisfac- 
tion arising from endeavors to be useful. 

Franklin received from Braddock eight hundred 
pounds, to pay such advances as might become indis- 
pensable to secure the object; but this proving too little, 
he not only paid the further sum of two hundred pounds 
of his own money, but found himself constrained to back 
the contracts by giving his own bonds for their perform- 
ance; the farmers alleging that they knew nothing of 
Braddock, or how far they could rely on his faith, or 
means of payment. This was not all. Learning, while 
at the camp, that the subaltern officers in the expedition 
were generally in straitened circumstances, and could 
not afford to supply themselves with many of the stores 
that might become necessary for their comfort on their 
march through the forests, Franklin, without imparting 
his design to any one, wrote to a committee of the Penn- 
sylvania assembly, which had the control of a small fund, 
stating the condition of the officers in question, and 
urging the committee to make them a present of sup- 
plies of the kind needed. The committee complied so 
promptly that these stores arrived in camp at the same 
lime with the wagons and pack-horses, and were received 
with the most grateful acknowledgments. General 



CHARACTER OF BRADDOCK. 287 

Braddock also expressed his obligations to Franklin for 
the important services he had rendered, cheerfully re- 
paid his private disbursements, and earnestly requested 
his further aid in forwarding provisions during the march 
of his troops to the frontier. Franklin consented, and 
continued his valuable services, until the expedition ter- 
minated in that overwhelming disaster so well known as 
" Braddock's defeat." 

In rendering these services, Franklin not only gave 
his most efficient personal efforts, but he actually paid 
out upward of a thousand pounds sterling of his own 
money. Fortunately for him, his accounts for these ad- 
vances reached Braddock a few days prior to the disas- 
ter referred to, and the general immediately remitted an 
order on the paymaster of his forces for the round thou- 
sand, leaving the balance for another opportunity. 

Franklin, who saw a good deal of Braddock, speaks 
of him in the following terms : " This general was, I 
think, a brave man, and might probably have made a 
figure as a good officer in some European war. But he 
hy^d too much self-confidence, too high an opinion of the 
validity of regular troops, and too mean a one of both 
Americans and Indians. Georo^e Cro^han, an Indian 
interpreter, joined him on his march with one hundred 
of those people, who might have been of great use to 
his army, as guides and scouts, if he had treated them 
kindly ; but he slighted and neglected them, and they 
gradually left him." Talking of his designs one day to 
Franklin, he said, "After taking Fort Du Quesne, [where 
Pittsburg now stands,] I am to proceed to Niagara ; and 
having taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow 
time, as I suppose it will ; for Du Quesne can hardly de- 
tain me above three or four days ; and then I see noth- 
ing to obstruct my march to Niagara." To this, Frank- 
lin modestly replied : ** To be sure, sir, if you arrive well 



288 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

before Du Quesne wim these fine troops so well provi- 
ded with artillery, the post, though completely fortified, 
and with a very strong garrison, can probably make but 
a short resistance. The only danger I apprehend of ob- 
struction to your march is from the ambuscades of the 
Indians, who are dexterous in laying and executing them ; 
and the slender line, nearly four miles long, which your 
army must make, may expose it to be attacked by sur- 
prise on its flanks, and cut like a thread into pieces, which, 
from their distance, can not support each other." Brad- 
dock, with a self-complacent smile, answered, " These sav- 
ages may indeed be formidable to your raw American mi- 
litia; but upon the king's regular and disciplined troops, 
sir, it is impossible they should make any inxpression." 

Such blind self-confidence and lamentable ignorance 
of the true nature of the service undertaken, as well as 
of the character of the enemy to be encountered, made 
all further suggestions useless : they could be cured only 
by one of those crushing disasters which are their legiti- 
mate consequence, and Franklin said no more. But the 
very first intimation this unfortunate commander hadpf 
the presence of *' these savages," was the opening of 
their deadly fire upon him from their ambuscade, which 
ended in laying upward of seven hundred of his men 
dead on the field of battle, and in his being himself car- 
ried from it mortally wounded ; while all that was done 
in the way of rallying and saving even the wreck of the 
army, was accomplished by the '* raw American militia," 
commanded by a young American colonel named George 
Washington. Captain Orme, one of Braddock's aids, se- 
verely wounded, was carried from the field with him, and 
continued near him during the two days he survived. 
That officer afterward told Franklin that the general re- 
mained silent all the first day till night, when he only 
said, " Who would have thought it V — that he was again 



BRITISH REGULARS. 289 

silent the next day until near its close, when he said, " We 
shall know better how to deal with them another time" — 
and in a few minutes after expired. 

Upon the death of Braddock, the command of his 
forces devolved upon Colonel Dunbar, who had been left 
in rear with a strong reserve and the principal part of 
the stores. When the fugitives from the battle readied 
the camp, they communicated their panic so effectually 
to Dunbar and his men, that, after destroying their stores, 
to have more horses to aid their flight, the whole body, 
still numbering over a thousand, with their commander 
at their head, instead of moving forward to meet the en- 
emy, consisting of some four or five hundred Indians and 
French, and to retrieve the honor of " the king's regular 
and disciplined troops," or to protect the frontier, as half 
their number of " raw American militia" would have 
done, if as well equipped and provisioned, used their 
very best diligence to reach the settlements, and could 
not, indeed, be persuaded to stop till they were safe in 
Philadelphia. 

This pusillanimous and precipitate retreat, though dis- 
graceful to Dunbar and his forces, and though it in- 
creased, for the time, the danger of the frontier settle- 
ments, taught the colonists a most useful lesson, inasmuch 
as the whole affair, in the words of Franklin, " gave us 
Americans the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of 
the prowess of British regular troops had not been well 
founded." This lesson, moreover, was further enforced 
by the conduct of the same troops while on their advance 
from the seaboard into the interior, during which they 
committed great outrages, rifling many inhabitants of 
their property, " besides insulting, abusing, and confining 
the people," says Franklin, "if they remonstrated;" and 
he adds, " This was enough to put us out of conceit of 
such defenders, if we had really wanted any." 
25 



290 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Upon the surprise and defeat of Braddock, his corre- 
spondence and other papers fell into the hands of the 
French, who, for the purpose of showing the hostile de- 
signs of the English government before the war actually- 
broke out, subsequently published some of them, in 
which Franklin had the well-deserved satisfaction of 
seeing that the unlucky general had dealt by him with 
honor and good faith, in not only appreciating justly his 
services to the expedition, but in warmly recommending 
him to the notice of the British ministry ; though, in con- 
sequence of the unhappy issue of Braddock's enterprise, 
or for some other reason, those recommendations were 
never acted on. "As to rewards from Braddock him- 
self," says Franklin, " I asked only one, which was, that 
he would give orders to his officers not to enlist any more 
of our bought servants, and that he would discharge such 
as had been already enlisted. This he readily granted, 
and several were returned to their masters on my appli- 
cation." Dunbar, however, behaved very differently ; 
for although on Franklin's application to him, in Phila- 
delphia, to discharge the servants of certain farmers of 
very limited means in Lancaster county, he promised to 
restore them to their masters if the latter would present 
themselves to him at Trenton, on his intended march to 
New York, yet when they came he broke his promise. 

The servants here meant, it should be observed, were 
such as have been more generally known as " redemp- 
tioners." They were poor emigrants from Europe, who 
sold their personal service for a specific term of years, as 
their only means of paying the expenses of emigration 
and securing employment afterward, by which they could 
redeem or buy out their time and make other provision 
for themselves. They stood in something like the same 
relation to those who thus purchased their service, as in- 
dented apprentices to their masters ; and the enlistment 



PERILS OP SURETYSHIP. 291 

of them, without the consent of their masters, was a griev- 
ance similar to that of enlisting apprentices in the same 
way. 

Not only did Franklin receive no compensation for 
his great services to Braddock and his troops, but those 
very services came near stripping him of his property. 
Having, as already stated, given his own bonds as surety 
for the payment of all loss and damage of the horses and 
wagons furnished to transport the various supplies for 
those troops, when the loss of the property thus furnished 
was known, the owners came directly upon him for their 
pay; and it was only after much exertion and anxiety 
that he was relieved from his hazardous position by Gen- 
eral Shirley, then commander-in-chief of the king's forces 
in America, on whom this and much other business left 
unsettled by Braddock devolved, and by whose orders 
these claims, amounting to nearly twenty thousand 
pounds, were examined and paid. 

Many testimonies, besides those already adverted to, 
are extant, showing the great value of Franklin's services 
to Braddock and to the public, and the high esteem in 
which he was held, not only by General Shirley and other 
high British functionaries in the colonies, but also by the 
people of Pennsylvania and their Assembly. General 
Shirley, who, though governor of Massachusetts, was 
then with a British force at Oswego, on Lake Ontario, 
in his letter to Franklin, dated the 17th of September, 
1755, announcing the orders he had issued for ascertain- 
ing and paying the above-mentioned claims, assures him 
that if he had earlier understood the position in which 
he was placed, he should sooner have enabled him to 
fulfil the contracts in question, " not only because com- 
mon justice demanded it, but because such public-spirited 
services deserve the highest encouragement ;" and, al- 
though much pressed by business preparatory to his de- 



292 LIFE OF IIFNJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

parture for Niagara, he adds that he " can not conclude 
without assuring" him that he has ** the highest sense of 
his public services in general." A letter from Israel 
Pemberton, a Quake? of Philadelphia, to Dr. Fothergill, 
of London, after mentioning various instances of Frank- 
lin's public labors at the same period, speaks of his pres- 
ence in the back settlements of Pennsylvania, while pro- 
curing teams for Braddock, as the providential means of 
averting, especially from the Quakers, the outrages which 
would otherwise have ensued from a forced levy of wag- 
ons, horses, and men, by the " madman," Sir John St. 
Clair, quartermaster-general of the expedition ; and adds : 
" Franklin's conduct throughout this affair was veiy pru- 
dent, and indeed he was the only person who was alone 
equal to it. The Assembly, sitting immediately after his 
return home, unanimously thanked him for it. The sat- 
isfaction of serving a people whom he respects, and his 
quick sense of the injurious treatment they meet with, 
animated Franklin so effectually, that I am in hopes it 
will engage him to act steadily and zealously in our de- 
fence." 

Franklin's exertions to promote the public sei'vice were 
as efficient in the Assembly as they had been among the 
people. In one important particular, however, it was 
exceedingly difficult to render any exertions available. 
Every bill passed by the Assembly for raising money by 
tax for the common defence and welfare was vetoed by 
the governor, pursuant to his instructions, for not ex- 
empting the estates of the Proprietaries. In ordinary and 
peaceful times, this gross injustice attracted but little at- 
tention out of Pennsylvania ; but in the emergency which 
followed Braddock's defeat, the exposed condition of the 
colonists, and the necessity for supplies, drew upon the 
Proprietaries the indignation of many in England, some 
of whom openly insisted that, in thus obstructing the de- 



VOLUNTEER MILITIA. 293 

fence of the province, by refusing to bear their equal and 
just share of the necessary cost of that defence, the Pro- 
prietaries forfeited their rights under the charter. This 
alarmed them to such a degree, that they sent orders to 
the receiver of their revenues in Pennsylvania to pay 
into the provincial treasury five thousand pounds in ad- 
dition to such sums as should be raised by the Assembly 
for public purposes. This being certified to that body, 
it vi^as agreed, in view of the existing public exigency, 
to regard it as equivalent to so much money levied by a 
general tax ; and an act was forthwith passed for raising 
sixty thousand pounds, which, as it exempted the Pro- 
prietary estates, was signed by the governor. 

Franklin having taken an active part in framing and 
passing this act, was appointed one of seven commission- 
ers for directing the expenditure of the money. While 
this measure was pending, he prepared another bill, which 
also became a law, for organizing a body of militia by 
voluntary enlistment. To avert the opposition of the 
Quakers to the latter bill, they were exempted from its 
operation ; while, for the purpose of recommending his 
plan of organizing the military force contemplated by it 
to the public generally, he wrote and published an able 
tract, in the form of a dialogue, in which he stated and 
answered, with marked effect, as the result gave him 
good reason to believe, all the objections he understood 
to be urged against it. 

While the organization and training of this militia were 
going on, Franklin was persuaded by Governor Morris 
to accept a commission, with ample powers to raise, or- 
ganize, and station a military force, and erect forts, for 
the protection of the northwestern frontier of Pennsyl- 
vania. The selection of his subordinate officers, among 
whom it is gratifying to find that the intrepid Wayne 
was one of the captains, was also submitted to himself 
25* 



294 LIFE OF BENJAMIM FRANKLIN. 

alone, blank commissiOTis for them being furnished by 
the governor ; and the troops, to the number of five hun- 
dred, to be raised for this purpose, were to be stationed 
at his discretion, and employed in such manner as he 
should direct. The men were soon raised, and his son 
William, who had been a subaltern officer in the prece- 
ding war, became very serviceable to him as his aid-de- 
camp. 

The frontier to be protected was the extensive district 
stretching northeasterly and southwesterly about midway 
between the Delaware and Susquehannah rivers, now 
principally included in the counties of Pike, Monroe, 
Northampton, Schuylkill, and Lebanon, and drained 
chiefly by the rivers Schuylkill and Lehigh, with their 
tributaries, and other smaller streams flowing to the Del- 
aware. Franklin ordered his troops to rendezvous at 
Bethlehem, on the Lehigh, the chief town of the Mora- 
vians, whose inhabitants, though a pacific people, had 
taken such alarm at the recent burning and massacre by 
the Indians at Gnadenhutten, one of their back settle- 
ments, that they had surrounded their larger buildings, 
which were of stone, with stockades, and had even sup- 
plied the chambers of their stone houses with piles of 
stones intended for the women to cast upon the Indians, 
if assailed, while a regular watch was kept up by pati'ols 
of armed brethren; so that when Franklin arrived there, 
he found the place well prepared for defence. 

The plan for the general protection of the frontier was 
to erect three forts or strong blockhouses : one at Gnad- 
enhutten ; another at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles 
further north in the direction of a post called Fort Ham- 
ilton, previously established on or near Broadhead's creek, 
and not far from the head-waters of the Lackawaxen ; 
and the other at about the same distance southwardly in 
the direction of Fort Lebanon, erected at an earlier day 



THE FRONTIER. 295 

near the forks of the Schuylkill. The post at Gnaden- 
hutten was to be the principal one, from which both men 
and supplies were to be sent, as occasion might require, 
to the^smaller garrisons to be placed in the other forts, 
and a corps of mounted rangers was to be kept moving 
from post to post along the whole line, which would thus 
be extended from a point on the Delaware not far from 
the confluence of the Lackawaxen, nearly or quite to the 
Susquehannah in the neighborhood of Middletown. 

To execute his plan, Franklin determined to proceed 
first to Gnadenhutten with the main body of his force, and 
having established that post, send out detachments each 
way to construct the other two, which he could easily cover 
and supply from the principal garrison. He left Bethle- 
hem with his troops on Friday, January 16, 1756, accom- 
panied by seven wagons with provisions and other stores. 
His route was up the valley of the Lehigh ; the road was 
rough, the weather rainy, the march toilsome ; and the gap 
of the mountain, through which the Lehigh makes its way, 
exposed the party to great danger of being cut off, had a 
resolute and active enemy taken advantage of that rough 
and narrow pass. The order of march, however, was 
arranged with such good judgment, and conducted with 
such vigilance, that although two Indian scouts came so 
near one night as to draw the fire of a sentinel, the whole 
party reached Gnadenhutten on the third day about noon, 
in safety and good spirits ; and by nightfall they were 
encamped under cover of a good breastwork constructed 
during the afternoon. 

Thomas Lloyd, who was in the expedition, and kept 
a diary, describes Gnadenhutten, when they reached it, 
as presenting " one continued scene of horror and de- 
struction. Where lately flourished a happy and peace- 
ful village, it was now all silent and desolate : the houses 
burnt ; the inhabitants butchered in the most shocking 



296 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

manner; their mangle^jodies, for want of burial, ex- 
posed to birds and beasts of prey ; and all kinds of mis- 
chief perpetrated that wanton cruelty could invent. We 
have omitted nothing- that can contribute to the happi- 
ness and security of the district ; and Mr. Franklin will 
at least deserve a statue for his prudence, justice, human- 
ity, and above all for his patience." 

As soon as they had provided for the security of their 
temporary camp, they went vigoi^ously to work to con- 
struct their fort ; and notwithstanding it rained so much 
of the time as materially to retard their labor, yet before 
the end of a week it was completed. The fort consisted 
of a strong stockade made of palisades about a foot in 
diameter, set three feet in the ground, rising twelve feet 
above it and sharpened at top, with a platform inside all 
round at half the height, and two ranges of loopholes for 
musketry, to fire through from the ground and from the 
platform ; and comfortable log-houses within for the shel- 
ter of the garrison. The area enclosed was one hundred 
and twenty-five feet in length by fifty in width. In a 
letter to a friend, dated at Gnadenhutten, the 25th of Jan- 
uary, 1756, Franklin, after describing the rapid progress 
of the work, says : " This day we hoisted our flag, made 
a general discharge of our muskets, which had been long 
loaded, and of our two swivels, and named the place 
Fort Allen, in honor of our old friend." 

Franklin was here in a new position ; but, as in every 
other scene of his active life, it served only to place in a 
new light the value of his clear practical understanding 
with other admirable qualities of his well-proportioned 
nature, and to furnish new matter of observation to his 
ever-vigilant mind. The important service committed 
to his charge was promptly and discreetly performed, 
and in his narrative of it he takes occasion to remark, 
among other things useful to be noted by all who have 



PORT ALLEN AND THE INDIANS. 297 

the direction of any considerable bodies of men, that they 
were most contented and tractable when fully employed ; 
that while at work they were cheerful and efficient, ex- 
ecuting their duties well ; but when for any reason their 
labors were suspended, they grew captious and quarrel- 
some, grumbling at their provisions, and in continual ill 
humor ; reminding him, as he says, of the sea-captain, 
whose rule it was to keep his crew busy, and who, when 
his mate told him one day that there was nothing for 
them to do, gave order that they should scour the an- 
chor. 

As soon as the fort was finished and a cover thus pro- 
vided in case of need, detachments from the garrison 
Degan to reconnoitre the adjacent country. No Indians 
were seen, but marks of their recent neighborhood were 
detected in various places, where they had been lurking, 
to watch what was going forward in and around the fort. 
One of their expedients, while thus engaged, for securing 
comfort, without betraying their place of concealment, 
was so ingenious, that Franklin describes it. The sea- 
son made a fire necessary ; but a fire kindled in the usual 
way on the surface of the ground being unsafe, they dug 
holes in the earth two or three feet in depth and width, 
in the bottoms of which they made small fires of char- 
coal chipped with their hatchets from burnt logs and 
stumps. Round these they sat with their legs hanging 
down from the knees, and their feet just above the coals, 
thus securing a very essential condition of rapid move- 
ment, while there was neither flame nor smoke to betray 
them. The prints of their bodies as thus disposed were 
plainly seen round several such holes ; but they were too 
few, it appeared, to expect any advantage from an attack 
on the garrison, or even its scouting-parties. 

By the time Franklin had effected the arrangements 
for guarding the back settlements, he received a com- 



k 



298 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

munication from Governor Morris, informing him that 
the Assembly had been summoned to meet, and wishing 
him to attend, if he could prudently leave the frontier. 
He received various letters also from his private friends, 
to the same effect ; and as the back settlers now felt 
pretty secure on their farms, he determined to return 
home. He did so the more readily, to quote his own 
words, " as a New-England officer, Colonel Clapham, 
experienced in Indian warfare, being on a visit at Fort 
Allen, consented to accept the command." Having pa- 
raded the troops, therefore, he read to them the commis- 
sion he had prepared for Clapham ; introduced him to 
them as a skilful officer, better qualified than himself for 
the command of such a post ; and adding some friendly 
and cheering words of exhortation and encouragement, 
took leave, accompanied by an escort as far as Beth- 
lehem. 

While at Gnadenhutten, Franklin received from Phil- 
adelphia, through the considerate affection and hospitable 
bounty of Mrs. Franklin, various consignments of cold 
roast-meats, mince-pies, apples, and other table-comforts, 
which he shared freely with those about him ; and, in his 
letters to his wife, he gives a pleasant account of his sit- 
uation, showing that the same buoyant and kindly nature 
that made his home a happy one, served also to impart 
a tone of cheerfulness to life at Fort Allen. " We have," 
says he, under date of January 25, 1756, "enjoyed your 
roast beef, and this day began on your roast veal. All 
agree that they are both the best that ever were of the 
kind. Your citizens, that have their dinners hot-and-hot, 
know nothing of good eating. TVe find it in much greater 
perfection when the kitchen is fourscore unites from the 
dining-room. The apples are extremely welcome, and 

do bravely after our salt pork As to our lodging, 

it is on deal feather-heds, in warm blankets Ev- 



HIS DISPOSITION. 299 

ery other day, since we have been here, it has rained 

more or less, to our no small hinderance All the 

things you sent me, from time to time, are safely come 
to hand, and our living growls every day more comfort- 
able All the gentlemen drink your health at ev- 
ery meal, having always something on the table to put 

them in mind of you "We all continue well, and 

much the better for the refreshments you have sent us. 
In short, we do very well ; for, though there are many 
things besides what we have, that used to seem neces- 
sary to comfortable living, yet we have learned to do 
without them." 

In November of the same year, while at Easton, with 
other commissioners, attending a conference with the 
headmen of the Delaware Indians, being disappointed in 
not receiving a line from his wife by a very convenient 
opportunity, he writes to her in a playful vein of mock 
resentment, a specimen of which may be pleasant to the 
reader ; " My dear child," (his usual style of address to 
her,) " I wrote to you a few days since, by a special 
messenger, and enclosed letters for all our wives and 
sweethearts, expecting to hear from you by his return, 
and to have the northern newspapers and English letters 
per packet ; but here he is without a scrap for poor us. 
So I had a good mind not to write you by this opportti- 
nity ; but I can never be ill-natured enough, even when 

there is most occasion I think I won't tell you 

that we are all well, nor that we expect to return home 
about the middle of the week. My duty to mother, [his 
wife's mother,] love to children, &c., I am your loving 
husband. — P. S. I have scratched out the loving words, 
they being writ in haste, hy mistake, when 1 forgot I was 
angry y 

This buoyancy of spirit, from which cheering influ- 
ences are ever emanating, if not as indispensable, in the 



300 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

leader of an eiiterprisigP'vvhether of difficulty or danger, 
as the ability to plan and command, is at least of liigh 
value when associated with such ability, especially when 
men are placed in unforeseen and unusual circumstances; 
and Franklin's deportment in relation to his private 
affairs, as well as in his long career of public service, 
presents abundant evidence of the union in himself of 
both qualities. 

In connection with the agreeable indications of char- 
acter just given, it will be interesting to turn for a mo- 
ment to some evidence of Franklin's sentiments and of 
the tone of his feelings and affections, in relation to sad- 
der and more sober themes. On his return home from 
the frontier, he received news of the death of his brother 
John, at Boston. This brother had married, for his sec- 
ond wife, a widow by the name of Hubbard, to whose 
daughter by her first husband was addressed the letter 
from which the following passages are taken : — 

" I condole with you," says Franklin to Miss Hubbard. 
** We have lost a most dear and valuable relative. But 
it is the will of God and nature that these mortal bodies 
be laid aside, when the soul is to enter into real life. 
.... We are spirits. That bodies should be lent us, 
while they can afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring 
knowledge, or in doing good to our fellow-creatures, is 
a kind and benevolent act of God. When they become 
unfit for these purposes, and afford us pain instead of 
pleasure, instead of an aid become an incumbrance, and 
answer none of the intentions for which they were given, 
it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided 
by which we may get rid of them. Death is that way." 
In a letter to his sister Jane and her husband, Edward 
Mccom, on occasion of the death of his aged mother, 
who, in her last years, had been most kindly tended by 
them, he refers to her in the tenderest tone of filial 



AFFECTIONS. 301 

affection, and expresses his grateful thanks to them for 
the personal and long-continued care of her, which his 
distance put it out of his own power, or that of his family, 
to bestow ; and in another letter to the same sister, upon 
the death of one of her children, he says : *' I am pleased 
to find that, in your trouhles, you do not overlook the 
mercies of God, and that you consider, as such, the chil- 
dren still spared to you. This is a right temper of mind, 
and must be acceptable to that beneficent Being, who is, 
in various ways, continually showering down his bles- 
sings upon many who receive them as things of course, 
and feel no grateful sentiments arising in their hearts on 
the enjoyment of them." 

His respect and affection for his mother were strong, 
and manifested themselves among other ways in frequent 
presents that contributed to her comfort and solace in 
her advancing years. In one of his letters to her, for 
example, he sends her a moidore, a gold piece of the 
value of six dollars, " toward chaise-hire," says he, " that 
you may ride warm to meetings during the winter." In 
another, he gives her an account of the growth and im- 
provement of his son and daughter; topics which, as he 
well understood, are ever as dear to the grandmother as 
to the mother. Of the character and capacities of the 
son it will be sufficient to say that, before he was thirty- 
five years old, he was appointed governor of New Jer- 
sey, under the administration of Lord Bute, shortly after 
the accession of George III. to the British throne. Of 
the daughter, afterward Mrs. Bache, he says : " Sally 
grows a fine girl, and is extremely industrious with her 
needle, and delights in her work. She is of a most af- 
fectionate temper, and perfectly dutiful and obliging to 
her parents and to all. Perhaps I flatter myself too much, 
but I have hopes that she will prove an ingenuous, sen- 
sible, notable, and worthy woman, like her aunt Jenny ;" 
26 



302 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

and he adds the folio w;ip^ notice of himself: " I enjoy, 
through mercy, a tolerable share of health. I read a 
good deal, ride a little, do a little business for myself 
and now and then for others, retire when I can, and go 
into company when I please. So the years roll round ; 
and the last will come, when I would rather have it said, 
* He lived usefully,^ than 'He died rich J " 

Among the more marked evidences of the generous 
interest he took in the welfare of his kindred, as well as 
the prudence and good sense with which he manifested 
that interest, may be mentioned his furnishing one of his 
nephews, Benjamin Mecom, with the means of establish- 
ing himself in business as a printer, first in the island of 
Antigua, and subsequently in Boston, together with the 
manner in which this was done. He reserved to himself, 
in the outset, one third of the profits, as in his other part- 
nerships in the same business ; intending, however, from 
the first, as he wrote to his nephew's mother, not only to 
give him ultimately the whole establishment, but also 
the accumulated proceeds he might have himself re- 
ceived during the connection ; but deeming it judicious 
to reserve to himself, as a partner, the right to exercise 
some control over his nephew till he should acquire some 
experience and correct a certain fickleness of purpose 
which he had occasionally evinced. Being encouraged 
by the management of his nephew, he shortly modified 
the terms of the connection, so as to require him merely 
to j:)ay over a certain portion of his profits to his mother, 
together with a small amount of sugar and other articles 
for his own family, and he might appropriate all the rest 
of his earnings to himself The result was favorable, as 
appears by a subsequent letter, written to the parents of 
his nephew on the arrival of the latter at Philadelphia 
from Antigua, on his way to Boston. In that letter, 
Franklin states that his nephew had settled all his ac- 



SENTIMENTS. 303 

counts honorably, had cleared his printing-office, and had 
good credit and some money in London, with which, to- 
gether with some farther assistance from himself, the 
young man was going to Boston to set himself up as a 
printer and bookseller. 

While awaiting at New York the lingering movements 
of Lord Loudon, Franklin, under date of the 19th of 
April, 1757, wrote to Mrs. Mecom respecting their half- 
sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Dowse, a letter so strongly marked 
by that considerate kindness of heart which was one of 
the most deep-seated and habitual sentiments of his 
breast, that we can not forego the gratification of tran- 
scribing portions of it, not only in justice to him, but 
also in the hope that others may profit by it. Mrs. Dowse 
was the eldest child of Franklin's father by his first wife, 
and was now eighty years old, having been born at Ec- 
ton, in England, March 2, 1677 ; and though her hus- 
band was yet living, they were so poor as to need occa- 
sional assistance from their friends. It is to this aged 
sister that the following passages refei,' : ** As having 
their own way is one of the greatest comforfs of life to 
old people, I think their friends should endeavor to ac- 
commodate them in that, as well as in anything else. 
When they have lived long in a house, it becomes natu- 
ral to them; they are almost as closely connected with it 
as the tortoise with his shell ; they die, if you tear them 
out of it. Old folks and old trees, if you remove them, 
it is ten to one that you kill them ; so let our good old 
sister be no more importuned on that head. We are 
growing old fast ourselves, and shall expect the same 
kind of indulgences ; and if we give them, we shall have 

a right to receive them in our turns I hope you 

visit sister as often as your affairs will permit, and afford 
her what assistance and comfort you can in her present 
situation. Old age, infirmities, and poverty, ]omed., are 



304 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

afflictions enough. Tf^ neglect and slights of friends 
and near relations should never be added. People in 
her circumstances are apt to suspect these — sometimes 
without cause ; and appeai'ances should, therefore, be at- 
tended to, in our conduct toward them, as well as re- 
alities.^^ 

Writing again at New York, in May, 1757, to Mrs. 
Mecom, in reply to inquiries from her respecting a young 
woman with whom her son Benjamin had become ac- 
quainted in Philadelphia and whom he intended to marry, 
and whose good qualities as ** a sweet-tempered, good 
girl," with *' a housewifely education," both Franklin and 
his wife well knew, he remarks : " Your sister and I 
have a great esteem for her ; and if she will be kind 
enough to accept of our nephew, we think it will be his 
own fault if he is not as happy as the married state can 
make him. The family is a respectable one, but whether 
there be any fortune I know not ; and as you do not in- 
quire about that particular, I suppose you think, with 
me, that where everything else desirable is to be met 
with, that is not very material. If she does not bring a 
fortune, she will help to make one. Industry, frugality, 
and prudent economy, in a wife, are to a tradesman, in 
their effects, a fortune." 

One or two more extracts, covering somewhat broader 
ground, will make a fit and interesting close to this ex- 
hibition of Franklin's private sentiments and family ties. 
They are from a rather long letter dated the 6th of June, 
1753, and usually cited as addressed to his friend White- 
field, the famous preacher ; though Dr. Sparks, on look- 
ing at the original draft, found it endorsed by Franklin's 
own pen as addressed to one Joseph Huey. Referring 
to an expression of thanks from the person addressed, 
for some kindness done him by Franklin, the latter re- 
marks that the only return he should desire would be an 



I 



FAITH AND WORKS. 305 

equal readiness, on his part, " to serve any ot"her person 
who might need his assistance, and so let good offices go 
round; for mankind are all of one family ;" and he then 
proceeds as follows : — 

" For my own part, when T am employed in serving 
others, I do not look upon myself as conferring favors, 
but as paying debts-. In my travels, and since my set- 
tlement, I have received much kindness from men, to 
whom I shall never have any opportunity of making the 
least direct return ; and numberless mercies from God, 
who is infinitely above being benefited by our services. 
Those kindnesses from men, I can therefore only return 
on their fellow-men ; and I can only show my gratitude 
for these mercies from God, by a readiness to help his 
other children, my brethren. For I do not think that 
thanks and compliments, though repeated weekly, can 
discharge our real obligations to each other, and much 
less those to our Creator. You will see in this my no- 
tion of good works, that I am far from expecting to merit 
heaven by them. By heaven we understand a state of 
happiness, infinite in degree, and eternal in duration. I 
can do nothing to deserve such rewards. He that, for 
giving a draught of water to a thirsty person, should, ex- 
pect to be paid with a good plantation, would be modest 
in his demands compared with those who think they de- 
serve heaven ^or the little good they do on earth. Even 
the mixed, imperfect pleasures we enjoy in this world, 
are rather from God's goodness than our merit : how 
much more such happiness of heaven! .... The wor- 
ship of God is a duty ; the hearing and reading of ser- 
mons may be useful ; but if men rest in hearing and pray- 
ing, as too many do, it is as if a tree should value itself 
on being watered and putting forth leaves, though it never 
produced any fruit. Your great Master thought much 
less of these outward appearances and professions than 
26* 



306 LIFE OP IJENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

many of his modern dimples. He preferred the doers 
of the word to the mere hearers ; the son that seemingly 
refused to obey his father, and yet performed his com- 
mands, to him that professed his readiness, but neglected 
the ivork ; the heretical but charitable Samaritan, to the 
uncharitable though orthodox priest and sanctified Le- 
vite ; and those who gave food to the hungry, drink to 
the thirsty, raiment to the naked, entertainment to the 
stranger, and relief to the sick, though they never heard 
of his name, he declares shall in the last day be accept- 
ed ; when those who cry, ' Lord ! Lord !' and who value 
themselves upon their faith, though great enough to per- 
form miracles, but have neglected good works, shall be 
rejected." 

Just before going to the frontier, it will be recollected, 
Franklin had procured the passage of a law, framed by 
himself, for raising a military force by voluntary enlist- 
rnent ; and had written and published a pamphlet, an- 
swering current objections to the measure, and commend- 
ing it to the public approbation. On his return to Phila- 
delphia he found the people, excepting the Quakers, very 
generally in favor of the new law, and companies enough 
enrolled and officered to form a large regiment. At a 
meeting of the officers of these companies, shortly after 
his return, they chose him for their colonel, and he ac- 
cepted the station. The regiment muster^ at its first 
review upward of a thousand men, rank and file, besides 
an artillery company over a hundred strong, with four 
brass field-pieces, which they soon learned to handle with 
dexterity and effect. At the close of the review they 
escorted their colonel home, and, in firing their salute, 
the field-pieces made such a concussion as to break sev- 
eral articles of glass belonging to his electrical appara- 
tus. In relating these incidents, Franklin adds that his 
new honors proved not much less brittle, inasmuch as all 



MILITARY HONORS. 307 

their commissions were soon after vacated by the repeal, 
in England, of the law under which they were held. 

The personal qualities and public services of Frank- 
lin, however, had won for him better and less brittle 
honors than any commission, even from his majesty of 
England, could confer. As a token of the esteem with 
which he was regarded, it may be mentioned that, while 
holding his colonelcy, having occasion to visit Virginia, 
his officers, to use his own words, " took it into their heads 
that it would be proper for them to escort him out of town 
as far as the lower ferry." For this purpose, just as he 
was about to mount his horse, they rode up to his door 
in full uniform, alike to his surprise and regret ; for he 
had a strong repugnance to display, and if he had re- 
ceived beforehand the least intimation of what was in- 
tended, he would have avoided it. But it was now too 
late, and he was constrained to submit to the well-meant 
but annoying honor. 

Some envious personal enemy of his wrote an account 
of this affair to Thomas Penn, who lived in London, and 
it served to impart new bitterness to the hatred with 
which the Proprietary already regarded Franklin, for 
the prominent part he had taken in the Assembly against 
exempting the proprietary estates in the province from 
taxation. Penn had even the effrontery not only to ac- 
cuse Franklin to the ministers of the crown with being 
the chief obstruction to theddng's service in the province, 
by opposing grants of money in proper form, and with 
the design to change the provincial government by force 
of arms — in evidence of which he cited the abovenamed 
escort — but he also endeavored, though ineffectually, to 
procure his removal as the head of the colonial postoffice 
department. 

With Morris, the provincial governor, though bound, 
like his predecessors, by the instructions of the Propri- 



308 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

etary, Franklin, notwi#ltanding the leading part he took 
in the Assembly in its disputes with that officer, continued 
personally on good terms ; and the governor occasionally 
consulted with him in relation to public affairs. In the 
measures taken in aid of Braddock's expedition, they co- 
operated ; and on hearing of its fatal issue, Morris in- 
stantly sent for Franklin, to confer with him on the means 
of protecting the back settlements. We have already 
seen with what ample powers Franklin was employed 
on the frontier ; and after his return from that service, 
the governor offered him a general's commission, if he 
would, with provincial troops, undertake the same enter- 
prise in which Braddock had so disastrously failed. In 
reference to this last proposal, Franklin, after a modest 
remark respecting his qualifications for military employ- 
ment, intimates that the governor himself also probably 
expected less from him in that way than from his popu- 
larity as a means of raising the requisite force, and from 
his influence in the Assembly for obtaining funds. The 
project, however, was not pressed ; and Morris was not 
long after succeeded by Governor Denny. 

On the arrival of the new governor, in 1757, the city 
authorities of Philadelphia gave him a public dinner by 
way of welcome, and introduction to the principal citi- 
zens, with whom his station and character would natu- 
rally bring him into political and social connection ; and 
he took the occasion to present to Franklin the gold 
medal voted him by the Royal Society in London for his 
discoveries in electricity and his eminent success in ad- 
vancing that branch of knowledge. Governor Denny 
executed this commission on behalf of the society in ap- 
propriate terms of respectful eulogy ; and after dinner, 
while the company generally were engaged with their 
conversation and wine, Denny, taking Franklin into an 
adjoining apartment, told him how strongly he had been 



GOVERNOR DENNY. 309 

urged, in England, and how earnestly he desired, to cul- 
tivate his friendship and avail himself of his advice in re- 
lation to public affairs and the management of his admin- 
istration ; that he should cheerfully render him any ser- 
vice in his p^ower; that nothing could more effectually pro- 
mote the public good than harmony betw^een the execu- 
tive and the representatives of the people ; that no per- 
son could exert a more efficient and wholesome influence 
in this way than he could ; and that such a course would 
certainly be followed not only by the most hearty ac- 
knowledgments, but also by the most substantial benefits. 

This conversation seems to have been skilfully con 
ducted by the governor ; but with all its well-worded as- 
surances of esteem and future advantage, its true aim 
and intent were clearly perceived by Franklin, who 
promptly yet cburteously replied that his circumstances, 
by the blessing of Providence, rendered him independent 
of proprietary favors, which, as a representative of the 
people, he could not in any event accept ; that no feeling 
of personal hostility had at any time influenced his pub- 
lic conduct ; that his opposition to the policy of the Pro- 
prietary had proceeded solely from his convictions as to 
the rights and true interests of the province ; that if the 
measures proposed by the Proprietary or his deputies 
should be in accordance with his own views of justice 
and the public welfare, he should cheerfully and gladly 
give them his hearty and earnest support ; aad thanking 
the governor for his expressions of personal regard, in- 
tijmated a hope that he was about to enter upon his ad- 
ministration unencumbered with the usual Proprietary 
instructions, which had been the real source of all those 
contests with the Assembly, that had been so annoying 
to preceding governors of the province, and had so much 
impeded the transaction of the public business. 

Thus the interview ended ; and though Governor Denny 



310 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

then made no explandlRns on the last point, yet, as soon 
as his official duties brought him into contact with the 
Assembly, the old instructions made their appearance, 
reproducing the old controversies, in which Franklin 
took the same leading part as before — the grincipal re- 
ports and other documents of the Assembly being the 
productions of his practised and vigorous pen. 

These official controversies, however, occasioned no 
personal animosity between the new governor and Frank- 
lin, nor any interruption of their social intercourse ; and 
Franklin describes Denny as having been a man of let- 
ters, of agreeable conversation and manners, and well 
acquainted with the w^orld. 

The obnoxious instructions, with which the Proprie- 
tary obstinately persisted in fettering the discretionary 
powers of the governor, were so repugnant to all ideas 
of equal rights and the general welfare of the people, 
and interfered so seriously with the services which the 
Assembly were sincerely disposed to render to the sov- 
ereign, but which, under the instructions, they could not 
render without wholly abandoning the chartered privi- 
leges of their constituents, that they determined to re- 
main no longer in such a position, but to petition the 
king for a redress of their grievances ; and they fixed 
on Franklin as their agent to carry over their memorial 
and lay their complaints before his majesty 

The immediate occasion of this step on the part of the 
Assembly was the rejection by the governor, acting un- 
der his instructions, of a bill for raising sixty thousand 
pounds for the king's use ; of which the sum of ten thou- 
sand pounds was to be subject to the order of Lord Lou- 
don, who had then recently arrived in the country, and 
superseded General Shirley as the commander-in-chief 
of his majesty's forces in America. 

Franklin promptly made preparation for his departure; 



THE EARL OP. LOUDON. 311 

and he had actually caused his sea-stores to be put on 
board of the packet at New York in which he was to 
sail, when Lord Loudon presented himself in Philadel- 
phia, in the hope that he might, by his personal interpo- 
sition, be able to reconcile the differences between the 
governor and the Assembly, and thus remove the chief 
impediment to the public service in the province of Penn- 
sylvania. With this view, his lordship requested Gov- 
ernor Denny and Mr. Franklin to meet him and make 
him fully acquainted with the nature of the differences 
in question, and the state of the controversy respecting 
them. The proposed conference was accordingly held, 
and the whole matter discussed. Franklin presented a 
full view of the grounds taken by the Assembly, a brief 
sketch of which has already been given ; while Governor 
Denny simply placed himself upon his instructions, to- 
gether with the bond to obey them, which he, like his 
predecessors, had been constrained to execute to the 
Proprietary, and the forfeiture of which would utterly 
ruin him in point of property. 

It speaks well for Denny's individual sense of justice 
and magnanimity, that, notwithstanding the critical and 
perilous position in which the penalty of his bond placed 
him, he seemed willing, as Franklin states, to encounter 
the hazard of its forfeiture, if the course of official action, 
which would expose him to it, should be advised by Lord 
Loudon. But though this disposition on the part of the 
governor raises a fair and strong presumption of the 
odious character of the Proprietary's instructions, still his 
lordship not only declined the responsibility of giving the 
advice suggested, but urged concession on the part of the 
Assembly, and entreated Franklin to exert his utmost in- 
fluence to that end ; declaring that, unless that body yield- 
ed, he would furnish no troops for the defence of their 
provincial frontier. 



312 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Franklin laid the \^^le matter before the Assembly, 
accompanying his statement, however, with a series of 
resolutions, drawn up by himself, setting forth the rights 
of the province, and declaring them suspended by force, 
against which they entered a solemn protest ; and then, 
dropping the bill already passed and rejected, another 
bill, so framed as not to clash with the instructions, was 
passed by the Assembly and signed by the governor. 

Thus, from the resources of his own mind, and through 
the legitimate influence he had acquired in the Assembly 
by his abilities and weight of character, Franklin ar- 
ranged this difficult and troublesome affair in such man- 
ner as not to concede any provincial right, and at the 
same time enable the j)i"ovincial authorities to meet the 
l^ublic exigency, now become, from the temper and move- 
ments of the Indians on the frontier, very pressing and 
full of danger to the back settlements. 

But while thus detained at Philadelphia in performing 
a public service at once so arduous, patriotic, and loyal, 
the ship, in which he had engaged a passage for England, 
sailed, taking with it the stores he had provided for him- 
self at no trifling expense, and for the loss of which his 
only compensation was thanks for his seivices from Lord 
Loudon, to whom nevertheless accrued all the reputation 
of adjusting the difficulties which occasioned the loss, and 
of putting the wheels of government again in motion — a 
very fair specimen of the sense of justice usually enter- 
tained by mother-countries and their gieat functionaries 
toward the native subjects of their colonial dependencies. 
Lord Loudon, upon seeing the object of his visit to 
Philadelphia thus accomplished, returned immediately to 
New York ; and in a day or two later Franklin followed, 
that he might take the next packet for England, which, 
as his lordship, to whose orders it was subject, had as- 
sured him would sail on the Monday then next to come. 



LORD LOUDON S CHARACTER. 313 

Indecision and procrastination, however, were the most 
prominent features of Lord Loudon's character; and 
April, May, and much of June, went by, before the de- 
spatches he wished to send to England were ready, though 
promised almost daily during that long period ; thus oc- 
casioning to Franklin not only great annoyance, but at 
least equal surprise that so inefficient a man should be 
intrusted with such high duties, as those which then per- 
tained to the commander-in-chief of his majesty's forces 
" in America. The character of Loudon, however, was 
soon understood by Pitt the elder, who then wielded the 
power of the British empire, and who, distinguished as 
he was for executive ability and vigor, could not long 
tolerate so dilatory and inefficient an agent, but speedily 
recalled him, to make way for the far abler and more ac- 
tive men, Lord Amherst and General Wolfe. 

The character of Lord Loudon, as a public man, can 
not be more pithily described than it is in an anecdote 
related by Franklin. While lingering in New York as 
stated, he met a messenger from Philadelphia, named 
Innis, who had just come on with a packet from Gover- 
nor Denny to Loudon, who told him to call the next 
morning for his answer. Two weeks after, Franklin 
again met Innis, and was told by him that he had called 
every morning on Lord Loudon for the promised reply, 
and it was not even yet ready. " Is it possible, when he 
writes so much, and is always at his desk ^" said Frank- 
lin. " Yes," said Innis, " but he is like the St. George 
on the signs, always on horseback and never riding on." 
At length, however, about the middle of June, the 
packet sailed, with Loudon's despatches and Franklin 
on board, and reached Falmouth, in the south of Eng- 
land, on the morning of the I7th of July, 1757. As the 
ship neared the English coast, at about twelve o'clock of 
the preceding night, she was, through the heedlessness 
27 



314 LIFE OB' BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

of the man on the lookout, in extreme peril of being 
wrecked on the rocks of Scilly, lying out in the sea off 
Land's-End, and suggesting the idea that they were once 
connected with that most southwesterly point of the Eng- 
lish coast. The escape was narrow and the peril great; 
and the impression thereby made on Franklin's mind is 
abundantly evinced by the following passage from a letter 
to his wife, giving an account of the voyage, and written 
at Falmouth in the evening of the day on which he landed: 
" The bell ringing for church," says he, " we went thither 
immediately, and, with hearts full of gratitude, returned 
thanks to God for the mercies we had received. Were 
I a Roman Catholic, perhaps I should, on this occasion, 
vow to build a chapel to some saint ; but as I am not, if 
I were to vow at all, it should be to build a lighthouse." 



ORIEVANCES OF PENNSYLVANIA. 315 



CHAPTER XXII. 

GRIEVANCES OF PENNSYLVANIA REMONSTRANCE TO PRO- 
PRIETARIES MISREPRESENTATIONS EXPOSED CAUSE 

PREPARED FOR HEARING EXCURSIONS IN ENGLAND 

FAMILY CONNECTIONS CANADA VISITS SCOTLAND 

MR. STRAHAN MARRIAGE PROPOSED MISS STEVENSON 

AND HER STUDIES POLITICAL ABUSE PENNSYLVANIA'S 

SHARE OF INDEMNITY MONEY FROM PARLIAMENT. 

Before entering upon the narration of Franklin's life 
and services in England, as the agent of Pennsylvania, it 
will be proper to give a brief view of the reasons for 
sending him thither. These reasons are well set forth in 
a report, dated the 22d of February, 1757, drawn up by 
himself as chairman of the Assembly's committee on 
grievances. They are founded on alleged violations of 
the grant made by King Charles II. to William Penn ; of 
Penn's own charter based on that grant, and defining the 
forms of government under which the province was set- 
tled ; of certain fundamental laws of the province made 
pursuant to that charter; and finally of some of the prin- 
ciples and provisions of the constitution and laws of the 
mother-country most essential to civil liberty and justice, 
and from the protection of which, British subjects, wher- 
ever dwelling, could not be rightfully excluded by the 
king or his grantees. 

The royal grant, which was justly regarded by the 
colonists as the basis of the provincial constitution, and 
not to be violated or modified by the grantee or his sue- 



31G LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

cessors, gave to ** WiHtRn Penn, his heirs and assigns, 
and to his and their deputies," full power to make laws, 
" according to their best discretion, by and with the ad- 
vice, assent, and approbation, of the freemen of the prov- 
ince or their delegates, for the good and happy govern- 
ment thereof," including " the raising of money, or any 
other end appertaining to the public state, peace, or 
safety," of the commonwealth thus to be constituted. 
This broad provision of the king's grant, it was held, 
precluded all those instructions which had occasioned so 
much trouble, controversy, and impediment to the public 
business, not only because it was absolutely binding on 
the deputy-governors as well as their principals the Pro- 
prietaries, but also because such instructions were wholly 
incompatible with that " best discretion" which they were 
bound to exercise, and this, too, in conjunction with the 
co-ordinate " advice, assent, and approbation," of the 
people of the province, as expressed by their represen- 
tatives, in whom, it was maintained, the grant had vested 
** an original right of legislation, which neither the Pro- 
prietaries nor any other person could divest, restrain, or 
abridge, without violating and destroying the letter, spirit, 
and design, of the grant." 

The obnoxious instructions, therefore, were a manifest 
encroachment on the vested rights of the people, as well 
as on the legal and proper discretion of the governor ; 
and to such an extent had they restrained and abridged 
just legislation, that no bill to raise supplies for the pub- 
lic service, howsoever " reasonable, expedient, or neces- 
sary" it might be, for the welfare and protection of the 
province, could be made a law, unless on complying with 
the instructions by wholly exempting the estates of the 
Proprietaries from their equal rateable assessments — 
though they constituted by far the largest private inter- 
est in the province, and would be proportionately bene- 



1 



GRIEVANCES. 317 

fited by its security,' gi-owth, and prosperity; while, by 
the laws of England, "the rents, honors, and castles, of 
the crown," though not the private property of the per- 
son wearing the crown, were actually taxed and paid 
** their proportion of the supplies granted for the defence 
of the realm and the support of the government ;" and 
while the sovereign and his nobles, as well as all other 
tax-paying inhabitants of England, were thus indirectly 
but really contributing " their proportion toward the de- 
fence of America," including Pennsylvania, it was held 
to be "in a more especial manner the duty of the Pro- 
prietaries to pay their proportion" of the taxes required 
for the preservation of their own provincial estates. The 
exemption of those estates, therefore, was declared to 
be "as unjust as it was illegal, and as new as it was ar- 
bitrary." 

It was further urged that, by virtue alike of the royal 
grant and of the colonial charter framed by Penn him- 
self, the provincial Assembly, when convened and acting 
as a legislative body in its provincial sphere and for its 
legitimate purposes, was as fully endowed with all the 
powers and privileges of such a body as the English 
House of Commons, possessing the incontestable right 
of granting supplies and laying taxes " in any manner 
they may think most easy to the people, and being the 
sole judges of the measure, mode, and time," of so doing ; 
but that the instructions of the Proprietaries, neverthe- 
less, tended directly and manifestly to subvert all those 
rights and privileges, especially in assuming arbitrarily 
to control the action of the Assembly in framing and pas- 
sing bills for raising money, so as to render that body, 
even if it should forego its just powers and the rights of 
its constituents, absolutely unable to raise the supplies 
requisite for the defence and welfare of the province. 

Another prominent ground of complaint was the con- 
27* 



318 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ditioii of the judiciary. binder the original charter framed 
by William Penii, the judges of the courts of record held 
their offices during good behavior ; but this independent 
tenure had latterly been changed, and the judges now 
held only during the pleasure of the Proprietaries or 
their deputy-governors. The alleged consequence w^as, 
that the "judges being subject to the influence and di- 
rection" of those who gave them their commissions, the 
laws were " often wrested from their true sense to serve 
particular purposes; the foundations of justice became 
liable to be destroyed ; and the lives, laws, liberties, priv- 
ileges, and properties of the people, rendered precarious 
and insecure." 

The enlistment, by the officers of the king's regular 
troops in the colonies, of immigrant servants bound for a 
specific term of years to their masters, was also presented 
as a heavy grievance, inasmuch as it " not only prevented 
the cultivation of the land, and diminished the trade and 
commerce of the province," but was rendered peculiarly 
odious by its unequal operation ; for there was no gen- 
eral regulation for an impartial distribution of the burden, 
and the servants were impressed into the army, not only 
against the consent of their employers, but without ma- 
king the latter any compensation for the loss of those 
services for which they had paid and of which they were 
thus forcibly deprived. 

The Proprietaries, moreover, had pursued a most 
odious policy in another respect. Although the expense 
of the treaties with the Indians for the cession of their 
lands and for the regulation of intercourse with them, 
was borne by the province, yet the choicest of those 
lands were monopolized by the Proprietaries. This 
ground of complaint was not included in Franklin's re- 
port to the Assembly, and was not, indeed, technically 
illegal ; for it had, with crafty foresight, been provided 



GRIEVANCES. 319 

at an early day that all bargains by individual colonists 
with any of the Indians for the purchase of lands, if made 
without the consent of the Proprietaries, should be ut- 
terly void, while the Proprietaries themselves were not 
subjected in this particular to any restriction. This mo- 
nopoly on their part, however, grew into such an abuse 
as greatly increased the odium against them, and served 
to extend and strengthen the general repugnance to the 
whole scheme of their government. 

Besides these complaints against the conduct and ad- 
ministration of the Proprietaries and their instructed 
deputies, the province had another weighty grievance to 
complain of as resulting from the action of the king. By 
the original grant to William Penn, though the laws 
passed by the provincial legislature were ultimately to be 
submitted to the king in council, and if there rejected 
were to become void, yet five years were allowed for 
making such submission, and meanwhile the laws be- 
came immediately operative in the province. This pro- 
vision in the grant was inti'oduccd, not to enable the king 
and council to control the internal policy of the province, 
but simply to keep the royal government informed thereof, 
and secure the allegiance of the provincial authorities and 
people. Latterly, however, instructions from the king's 
ministers, as well as from the Proprietaries, had been 
sent out, prohibiting a certain class of laws from taking 
effect, if passed, until after they had received the sanc- 
tion of his majesty in council. This prohibition was 
aimed particularly against the enactment of laws author- 
izing the creation of bills of credit to be used in the prov- 
ince as a circulating medium ; and it v/as felt to be a 
serious injury to the business of the people, as well as a 
plain encroachment upon their chartered rights ; for this 
paper currency, in the very great scarcity of hard money 
produced by the nature and condition of the commerce 



320 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

of the colonies with th^iother-country, had been of very- 
great benefit to all branches of the internal trade and ag- 
riculture of the province, and its credit had been thor- 
oughly sustained by the prudent and well-devised means 
provided, in every act authorizing the issue of such bills, 
for redeeming them. 

Such was the nature of the principal grievances of 
which Pennsylvania complained, and from which Frank- 
lin was commissioned on behalf of the province to apply 
for relief The most prominent among them, at the pe- 
riod in question, was that which grew out of the instruc- 
tions given by the Proprietaries to their governors re- 
specting taxation, and which, in the exigencies produced 
by war, was well fitted to exasperate the public mind. 
Franklin was accordingly directed to present himself, in 
the first instance, to the Proprietaries, and endeavor by 
personal conference to induce them to relinquish their 
claims to the exemption of their provincial estates from 
taxation, and abandon the policy which had occasioned 
so much controversy, had so much obstructed the proper 
administration of public affairs, and rendered themselves 
and their government so odious. To this end he carried 
with him a formal remonstrance from the Assembly; and 
in case they should persist in repelling the claims thus 
urged upon them, then a petition, with which he was also 
furnislied by the Assembly on behalf of the province, was 
to be laid before the king in council, asking for relief of 
a broader kind, covering the whole list of grievances, 
and extending to a thorough reform of the provincial 
government, in accordance with the provisions and spirit 
of the original charter and with the recognised and true 
principles of the British constitution. 

Falmouth, as we have seen, was the port at which 
Franklin reached England, and he proceeded thence by 
land to London, where he arrived on the evening of July 



ARRIVAL IN LONDON SICKNESS. 321 

26, 1757. At the invitation of his friend Collinson he 
vv^ent in the first instance to the house of that gentleman, 
v^here he was hospitably entertained till he could procure 
suitable permanent lodgings. Such lodgings he shortly 
after found at the house of Mrs. Stevenson, No. 7 Craven 
street ; and they proved so convenient, comfortable, and 
every way pleasant, that he made his home there during 
all his long subsequent residence in London, embracing, 
in the two missions on which he was sent thither, about 
fifteen years. That house, says Dr. Sparks, is noted to 
this day, in the London guide-books, as " the house in 
which Franklin resided." 

Not long after his arrival in London, however, he was 
seized with intermittent fever, brought on by a violent 
cold. It appears from a letter to his wife, dated the 22d 
of November, 17.57, that at the beginning of the prece- 
ding September he had, as he thought, nearly recovered ; 
but on going out again, perhaps imprudently, he had 
taken another cold, upon which the fever returned with 
increased violence, accompanied by fits of pain in his 
head, continuino: " seldom less than twelve hours, and 
once thirty-six," of such extreme severity as to produce 
at times delirium ; and when they went off, leaving the 
top of the head "very sore and tender." He was most 
assiduously and kindly nursed by the family with which 
he had become domesticated, and he received from his 
physician, the celebrated Dr. Fothergill, (a Quaker, and 
in later years a zealous advocate of conciliation with the 
American colonies,) all the attention and aid that medi- 
cal skill, rendered vigilant by the warmest friendship, 
could bestow. The disease, after about eight weeks, 
went off with a fit of spontaneous vomiting and diarrhoea ; 
and as some of the circumstances connected in this case 
with the termination of this most distressing malady are 
somewhat strongly marked, it may be useful to state them, 



322 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

on the authority of the^atient himself, a little more par- 
ticularly. That great remedy, the Peruvian bark, in 
those days, when chemistry had not yet presented its 
virtues in a better form, was administered both ** in sub- 
stance and infusion;" and Franklin had taken so much 
of it, that he *' began to abhor it." Notwithstanding the 
condition of his stomach, from which this abhorrence of 
the bark proceeded, he " dared not take a vomit for fear 
of his head.'''' Nature, it seems, however, had no such 
fear: for he was taken one morning with a lit ^^ sjjonta- 
neous and thorough voiniting, followed immediately by a 
diarrhoea, recurring at short intervals during the greater 
part of the day. The effect was decisive. He consid- 
ered it, to use his own words, " a kind of crisis to the 
distemper, carrying it clear off ; for ever since I feel 
quite lightsome, and am every day gathering strength. 
So I hope my seasoning is over, and that I shall enjoy 
better health during the rest of my stay in England." 

Notwithstanding the prejudices Franklin had to en- 
counter in the outset of his career in philosophy, his rep- 
utation had long stood high in England, and still higher 
on the continent, where the value of his philosophical 
researches had been at once acknowledged ; and the at- 
tentions he received from men of science and other emi- 
nent individuals, both personally and by correspondence, 
served to relieve even the tedious weeks of sickness and 
convalescence ; and when he regained his usual health, 
his intercourse with people of this class constituted his 
chief gratification, and added greatly to the esteem with 
which he was personally regarded. 

Attractive as this intercourse was to him, however, as 
soon as his recovery was sufficiently confirmed to enable 
him prudently to engage in business, he lost no time 
in waiting upon the Proprietaries, Thomas and Richard 
Peni), and laying before them the objects of his mission. 



MISREPRESENTATIONS CORRECTED. 323 

The manner in which they received him, and the perti- 
nacity with which they insisted on their claim to interpret 
their powers in their own way, without reference to the 
views of his constituents, soon convinced Franklin that 
no just arrangement of the controversy could be effected 
with them, and that he should not only be constrained to 
invoke the interposition of a higher authority, but that in 
making this appeal he would have to encounter the most 
strenuous opposition from the Penns, and be obstructed 
by every impediment they could place in his way ; to say 
nothing of the prejudices of the king and his ministers 
in behalf of executive prerogative in every form, and 
their habitual jealousy of colonial privileges and all claims 
grounded upon them. 

This latter prejudice had been brought to bear upon 
Pennsylvania with peculiar weight, by the intrigues and 
misrepresentations of the Proprietaries. They had been 
so uncandid and dishonest as to represent that those dif- 
ficulties in the way of raising supplies for the public ser- 
vice in that province, which their own instructions to 
their governors had occasioned, had arisen solely from a 
factious and aggressive spirit on the part of the people 
and their representatives, who, it was urged, only made 
their unwarrantable complaints against the Proprietaries 
a pretext to cover their disloyalty to the crown. The 
public journals, moreover, were used to disseminate these 
misrepresentations ; and such was the effect they had 
produced on public sentiment in England, that Franklin 
deemed it necessary to expose them through the same 
channels. This he did in a very able letter, under the 
signature of his son, (whom he had taken to England 
with him,) addressed to the publisher of the paper in 
which the grossest and most abusive of the misrepresen- 
tations had appeared ; though it should be mentioned, as 
a further proof of the malice and falsehood of his adver- 



324 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

saries, for the insertion of the letter he was compelled 
to pay. 

The charges, which exhausted the patience of Frank- 
lin, and called forth this communication, were professedly- 
grounded on letters from Philadelphia, stating that, while 
the Indians were desolating the back settlements of the 
province, the Assembly, and especially the Quakers, were 
engaged in factious quarrels with the governor, and would 
grant no supplies for defence, unless by such bills as the 
governor could not approve without sacrificing the rights 
of the Proprietaries and violating his allegiance to their 
common sovereign. Franklin's reply thoroughly exposed 
these calumnies. He showed what had been done for 
the protection of the frontier, in building forts and raising 
troops ; that the settlers were themselves also abundantly 
supplied with arms and ammunition, which they well 
knew how to use ; that the Assembly, since the com- 
mencement of the very war then waging, had raised more 
than one hundred thousand pounds for military purposes, 
besides the large sums required for the support of the 
provincial government and other civil objects ; that an 
armed ship had been employed at the expense of the 
province as a cruiser on the coast ; that the Quakers, 
though non-combatants from religious scruples, consti- 
tuted only a small portion of the whole people, and that, 
so far from combining to resist the acts of the Assembly 
for the common defence, they had in various instances 
resigned their seats in that body and kept aloof from 
public affairs on account of their principles ; and finally^ 
that all the real obstacles to the vigorous and successful 
management of the public concerns of the province, and 
to the security and welfare of the people or any portion 
of them, were in truth created by the unjust, arbitrary, 
and unconstitutional instructions, with which the Propri- 
etaries trammelled their governors. 



' DELAY!^. 325 

The statements of this able and honest document were 
so full and clear, showed so perfect a knowledge and 
mastery of the subject, drew the attention of leading men 
so effectually to the whole case, and made so strong an 
impression, that no public reply to it was attempted. 
The Proprietaries, nevertheless, continued obstinate and 
unyielding. The remonstrance from the Assembly re- 
mained unanswered, frivolous pretexts for delay were 
invented; and at the end of twelve months, nothing hav- 
ing been accomplished, Franklin set about taking the 
necessary steps to bring the matter before the privy 
council. To do this, however, much time was required, 
as the case, in the first instance, had to go for a hearing 
before the board of trade, and having there been argued 
by counsel on both sides, would be sent up, in the form 
of a report, with the opinion of that body upon it, to the 
council. If no relief should be obtained in that way, 
Parliament was then to be petitioned for redress. 

In this state of things, all that Franklin could do was 
to put the counsel, who were to argue the cause on the 
part of the province before the board of trade, in full 
possession of the facts and papers belonging to the case, 
together with such views and instructions as he deemed 
proper ; and having done so, as there was every likeli- 
hood that more than sufficient time for preparation would 
elapse before the hearing could be had, he availed him- 
self of the opportunity thus forced upon him by the de- 
lay of his business, to extend his acquaintance with men 
of worth and distinction, to visit interesting places, and 
to see such objects as were worth a visit and within his 
reach. In writing to his wife on the 21st of January, 
1758, he tells her that he is likely to be detained a full 
year longer, in order to accomplish his business effectu- 
ally ; and he then adds : "You may think, perhaps, that 
I can find many amusements here to pass the time agree- 
28 



326 LIFE OF BKNJAMIN FKANKLIN. 

ably. It is true the i^ard and friendship I meet with 
from persons of worth, and the conversation of ingenious 
men, give me no small pleasure ; but at this time of life, 
domestic comforts afford the most solid satisfaction, and 
my uneasiness at being absent from my family, and my 
longing desire to be with them, make me often sigh in 
the midst of cheerful company." 

Among the labors performed by Franklin himself, or 
with the assistance of others through his procurement 
and instructions, and designed to aid the cause of the 
province, not merely before the board of trade and the 
privy council, but also in the larger view in which it was 
to be presented to Parliament, should that last resort be- 
come necessary, was the preparation of an elaborate work 
entitled "An Historical Review of the Constitution and 
Government of Pennsylvania." This performance, ex- 
tending through four hundred and fifteen octavo pages, is 
grounded on the original charter from the king ; the frame 
of government prepared by William Penn pursuant to 
that charter, and under which the settlement of the new 
colony commenced ; certain fundamental laws accompa- 
nying that frame of government, and intended to define 
its powers and the rights and duties of the colonists 
more in detail; the modifications of the government 
during the life of Penn ; the more important acts of 
the Assembly and the Proprietaries or their governors 
after the death of the founder ; and public documents, 
votes, and proceedings of the Assembly, down to the 
time of Franklin's mission. 

In those days, the department of the British govern- 
ment, now in charge of the colonial secretary, was man- 
aged by the board of trade ; and the work just mentioned 
seems to have grown, at least in part, out of some sug- 
gestions made to Franklin by Robert Charles, an able 
lawyer, long resident in London as the general agent of 



I 



HISTORY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 327 

Pennsylvania, and well informed of the sentiments of the 
British ministry and the state of public opinion in rela- 
tion to the colonies ; for Franklin, in a letter dated the 
10th of June, 1758, to Isaac Norris, speaker of the As- 
sembly, referring to Mr. Charles, writes as follows : " One 
thing that he recommends to be done before we push our 
point in Parliament, is to remove the j^rejudices that art 
and accident have spread among the people of this coun- 
try against us, and to obtain for us the good opinion of 
mankind out of doors. This I hope we have it in" our 
power to do, by means of a work, now nearly ready for 
the press, calculated to engage the attention of many 
readers, and efface the bad impressions received of us ; 
but it is thought best not to puhJish it till a little before 
the next session of Parliament." 

The work, accordingly, was prepared, in 1758, from 
materials sujDplied by Franklin, and under his immediate 
direction and supervision, but was not published till early 
in 1759. The aim of this performance, the materials of 
which it was composed and which included much documen- 
tary matter from his own pen while in the Assembly, and 
the vigor with which it was executed, together with the 
circumstances and time of its appearance, were all such 
as to lead the public very naturally to assign the author- 
ship of it to Franklin. This opinion, too, was busily 
propagated by the Proprietaries and their dependents 
in both England and Pennsylvania ; for he was the great 
champion of the popular cause, and they hoped to weaken 
that cause by directing against him the whole weight of 
prevailing prejudices, especially among leading men in 
England. Franklin, however, was not the author, in the 
usual acceptation of the term. This fact is expressly 
declared in a letter dated the 27th of September, 1760, 
to David Hume, in which he writes as follows : " I am 
obliged to you for the favorable sentiments you express 



328 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

of the pieces sent to y^; though the volume relating to 
Pennsylvania affairs was not written by me, nor any part 
of it, except the remarks on the Proprietary's estimate of 
his estate, and some of the inserted messages and reports 
of the Assembly, which I wrote when at home, as a 
member of committees aj^pointed by the house for that 
service. The rest was by another hand." 

The person to whom Franklin refers, is supposed by 
many to have been his old acquaintance, James Ralph, 
whom he had again met in London, very much improved 
in condition, and who, having early relinquished his 
pursuit of poetry for history, and politics, had become 
a writer of considerable eminence, and was from the cir- 
cumstances of their early connection as well as his occu- 
pation at the time in question, very likely to have been 
the person referred to. 

Having thus taken all the preliminary steps in his pow- 
er to prepare the cause of the province, for the hearing 
before the board of trade, as there was every likelihood 
that even more than sufficient time for that preparation 
would elapse, before the hearing could be had, he availed 
himself of the opportunity thus forced upon him, by delays 
which he could not prevent, to extend his acquaintance 
with distinguished men, who courted his society, and to 
visit such places of interest and objects worth seeing as 
were within his reach. Much of the summer of 1758, 
therefore, he passed in making excursions in different 
directions in England, accompanied by his son. In May 
he went to Cambridge, some forty to fifty miles north of 
London, and the seat of one of the two great English 
universities. Referring to this visit in a letter to his wife, 
dated June 10, 1758, he says : " We stayed there a week, 
being entertained with great kindness by the principal 
people, and shown all the curiosities of the place ; and 
returning by another road to see more of the country, 



FAMILY CONNECTIONS. 329 

we came again to London." He found this jaunt ben- 
eficial to his " health and spirits," and on returning to 
London, finding that " all the great folks were out of 
town, and public business at a stand," he determined to 
avail himself of the invitation he had received while at 
Cambridge, to attend the annual commencement at that 
university, which was to take place early in July. '* We 
went accordingly," says he, in the letter just cited, ''were 
present at all the ceremonies, dined every day in their 
halls, and my vanity was not a little gratified by the par- 
ticular regard shown me by the chancellor and vice-chan- 
cellor of the university, and by the heads of the colleges." 
When the commencement was over, instead of return- 
ing to London, he went into Northamptonshire taking 
his son with him, to look up his family connections. In 
Wellingborough he found an aged cousin, "dauo-hter 
and only child of Thomas Franklin," his father's eldest 
brother. She was five years older than his father's oldest 
child, Elizabeth, (Mrs. Dowse,) being therefore, in 1758, 
eighty-six years old, but she well recollected her and her 
father's removal with his family, then consisting of his 
first wife and three children, to Boston, in 1685. " I 
knew she lived at Wellingborough," says Franklin to 
his wife, " and had married there to one Richard Fisher, 
a grazier and tanner, about fifty years before, but hav- 
ing had no correspondence with her for about thirty 
years, did not expect to see either of them alive, and so 
inquired for their posterity." He was, however, direct- 
ed to their house, where he found both the husband and 
wife very infirm from their great age, but very glad to 
see their American cousins. They had a competent es- 
tate and lived in comfort. Their only child, a daughter 
and never married, had died at the age of thirty years. 
Mrs. Fisher gave Franklin some of his uncle Benjamin's 
letters, and much information respecting the other 
28* 



330 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

brancnes of the Fraiil<^ family. One of tliese he after- 
ward found in London. She was the '* daughter of his 
father's only sister, very old and never married," but a 
kind and good woman, and though poor, very cheerful 
and contented. 

Franklin next went to Ecton, about four miles from 
Wellingborough, and the place where his father was 
born, and where his ancestors had resided from time im- 
memorial. The first object of his search was the old 
homestead. It passed to Mr. Fisher with his wife, but 
he had sold the property. The land had been united to 
another farm ; and in the old stone house, still called 
" the Franklin house," a school was kej3t. He also vis- 
ited the rector of the parish, who received him kindly, 
and showed him the old registers of the church, where 
he saw the records of the births, marriages, and deaths 
of his ancestors, back to the commencement of the regis- 
ter, two hundred years before. The graveyard, too, 
contained many memorials of the family, some of which 
were " so covered with moss that we could not read the 
letters, till a hard brush and a basin of water were 
brought, with which they were cleaned, and his son 
copied them." Tj^e rector's wife, " a good-natured, 
chatty old lady," told him various anecdotes of his uncle, 
Thomas Franklin, (the father of Mrs. Fisher,) who was 
" a conveyancer, clerk of the county courts, and cleik of 
the archdeacon to whose jurisdiction the parish belonged; 
a very leading man in all county affairs, and much em- 
ployed in public business." It was through the enter- 
prise of this active and public-spirited man that the 
village-church was furnished, by a subsciiption set on 
foot by him, with a chime of bells, and his relatives from 
across the Atlantic now had the gratification of hearing 
them play. He had also devised a method of protecting 
the meadows about Ecton from the injury they had often 



HIS UNCLE THOMAS. 331 

suffered from the freshets of the river which runs through 
the village ; a method still in use at the time of this visit. 
The method is not described ; but w^hen first proposed, 
said the rector's wife, though the villagers could not 
conceive how it could answer the purpose, yet they 
agreed that, " if Franldin says he knows how to do it, 
it will be done." In short, it appears that Thomas 
Franklin's counsel was sought in relation to most local 
matters, whether public or private, if they presented any 
difficulty, and "he was looked upon by some," said the 
narrator, "as something of a conjurer;" and even cabi- 
net-ministers did not disdain to weigh his opinions some- 
times in respect to points of domestic policy. This 
Thomas Franklin, whose character seems to have pre- 
sented not a few traits of resemblance to that of his 
illustrious kinsman, died exactly four years, to a day, 
before that kinsman was born. So strong was the re- 
semblance of character just mentioned, that Franklin, in 
the introductory part of his autobiography, quotes a re- 
mark of his son, who, upon listening to this account of 
Thomas, said to his father, "Had he died four years 
later, on the same day, one might have supposed a trans- 
migration." 

In a letter to his favorite sister, Mrs. Jane Mecom, 
written a few days after the one to his wife, from which 
the preceding incidents are derived, Franklin refers again 
to his visit among his kinsfolk in England, and speaks 
particularly of a cousin Jane, one of his uncle John 
Franklin's daughters, who had been wife to Robert 
Page, but had died the year before. Mr. Page, how- 
ever, was living, and had in his possession a number of 
letters to his wife from her uncle Benjamin, between 
whom and his brother Josiah, Franklin's father, there 
was an unusually strong attachment, and who, following 
that brother to America, had lived for some vears in his 



332 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

family. Those letters 4Plre given to Franklin. In one 
of them, dated at Boston, July 4, 1723, the writer, refer- 
ring to Mrs. Mecom, then a little girl, says that his 
brother Josiah had also a Jane, " a good-humored child;" 
and Franklin, after playfully enjoining it upon his sister 
to " keep up to her character," goes on to sj^eak of some 
advice from his uncle Benjamin, who was a man of sin- 
cere piety, to his niece Jane in England. The advice 
accompanied a religious book he sent her, and was in 
the form of an acrostic upon her name, Jane Franklin. 
It was, in substance, an exhortation to cultivate the 
Christian graces of faith, hope, and charity, which were 
typified, in the quaint manner of those days, under the 
figure of a house of three stories. Franklin copies the 
acrostic for his sister, ** for namesake's sake, as well as 
the good advice it contains," and then appends to it a 
very characteristic comment, from which the following 
passages are taken : — 

"After professing truly," says Franklin, " that I had a 
great esteem and veneration for the pious author, permit 
me a little to play the commentator. The meaning of 
the t/iree stories seems somewhat obscure. You are to 
understand, then, that JaitJi, hojje, and charity, have been 
called the three steps of Jacob's ladder, reaching from 
earth to heaven. Our author calls them stories, likening 
religion to a building, and these are the three stories of 
the Christian edifice. Thus, improvement in religion is 
called building 7ip, and edification. Faith is, then, the 
ground-floor, and hope is up one pair of stairs. My dearly 
beloved Jenny, do not delight to dwell too much in those 
lower rooms, but get as fast as you can in-to the third 
story, for in truth the best room in the house is charity.^^ 
Again : the author had written, very likely from the 
scantiness of his poetical vocabulary, " Kindness of heart 
by toords express" — on which the comment runs thus: 



LETTERS AND SENTIMENTS. 333 

" Strike out words and put in deeds. The world is too 
full of compliments already. They are the rank growth 
of every soil, and choke the good plants of benevolence 
and beneficence ; nor do I pretend to be the first in this 
comparison of words and actions to plants. You may 
remember an antient poet, whose works we have all 
studied and copied at school long ago — 

' A man of words and not of deeds, 
Is like a garden full of weeds' " 

In the conclusion of this playful and yet earnest and 
affectionate letter, he does not forget his aged half-sister, 
Mrs. Dowse, but requests that Mrs. Mecom would read 
to her the account of their connections in England, which 
would be sent to her by his wife for their gratification. 

In making these inquiries concerning his kindred, and 
tracing these various currents of consanguinity, however 
obscurely they might be flowing along the humbler or 
more retired ways of life, Franklin was gratifying one 
of the strongest propensities of his kindly nature ; one 
which pervaded his whole being; which not only consti- 
tuted an essential ingredient of his own happiness, but 
rendered him peculiarly dear to his familiar friends; 
which, in its various manifestations and wider influences 
as a social principle, led him to regard nothing human 
as alien to his heart, and without which, human life can 
be little better than a dreary and cheerless waste ; which 
spread over his manners and general deportment so at- 
tractive a charm, that, wherever he mingled in society, 
or engaged in correspondence and personal intercourse 
of any kind, even with the most eminent, whether in birth 
and station, or in the pursuits of science, added to the 
respect and deference he commanded for his abilities 
and acquirements as a philosopher and a sage, the 
warmer sentiment of esteem and friendship for him as 
a companion and a man. 



334 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Besides his excursi^s to different parts of England, 
Franklin, during the delay of the business of his mission, 
gave some portion of his time to his favorite electrical 
inquiries ; and he paid, also, not a little attention to the 
leading political questions of the day and the policy of 
the government. The war with France was not only still 
going on, but was waged with greater vigor than ever, 
under the active administration of Pitt the elder, that 
great minister applying to its prosecution everywhere, 
by land and sea, in Europe, India, and America, the 
whole resources of the empire, with all the energy of his 
character, and with a success corresponding to the power 
of mind and of military force brought to bear upon it. 
The deep interest of the British colonies in continental 
America, in the results of the war, was the topic which 
chiefly engaged Franklin's thoughts, and he was partic- 
ularly solicitous that the government should turn its best 
efforts to the conquest of Canada. He regarded that 
conquest as the blow which, of all others, would not only 
be most deeply and permanently felt by France, but 
especially, also, as the most expedient, not to say the 
only way, in which the safety, peace, growth, and lasting 
prosperity of the North American colonies of Great Brit- 
ain could be secured. With a jDOwerful enemy, like 
France, continually pressing on the frontiers of the col- 
onies, commanding the great channels of internal trade 
on the lakes and rivers, and controlling the sentiments 
and the power of most of the Indian tribes, the colonial 
settlements could not, except by very slow degrees, be 
extended westward much beyond their then existing 
bounds, but would be kept perpetually in a state of 
alarm and insecurity inconsistent with their prosperity. 
They would thus not only be far less valuable to the 
mother-country, but would also make it necessary to ex- 
pend more upon the means of protecting them, than the 



1 



MR. PITT AND CANADA. 335 

conquest of the enemy, on that side, would cost, and 
which, when once accomplished, would remove both 
sources of expenditure, and leave the colonies perfectly- 
competent to protect themselves, to secure the friend- 
ship of the Indians, and enjoy exclusively the advantages 
of an extensive and profitable trade with the tribes; and 
by opening a clear field for the enterprise of the inhab- 
itants, contribute largely to their own prosperity, and, 
through that, to the commerce of Great Britain. 

To promote his views on this point, Franklin not only 
made it the topic of conversation, in his general inter- 
course with society, whenever an opportunity j^resented 
itself, but he sought, for some time, to obtain a personal 
interview with the great premier, in the hope of impres- 
sing his mind with the importance of the proposed policy 
so thoroughly as to induce him to adopt and carry it into 
effect with his characteristic promptitude and energy. 
Though he did not succeed, at that time, in obtaining 
the desired conference with Mr. Pitt, yet his efforts to 
that end were not wholly fruitless, inasmuch as they 
brought him into personal intercourse with the minister's 
under-secretaries, through whom his views, w^ith more 
or less fullness and force, reached the minister himself. 

In the very interesting paper addressed to his son in 
1775, giving an account of a series of interviews and 
correspondence between himself, the earl of Chatham, 
Lord Howe, David Barclay, and others, held in 1774, in 
the hope of falling upon some mode of effecting a recon- 
ciliation with the colonies, Franklin, referring to the 
abovementioned topic, and the failure of his endeavors 
to obtain an interview with Mr. Pitt, makes the following 
remarks : " I was obliged to content myself with a kind 
of non-apparent and unacknowledged communication 
through Mr. Potter and Mr. Wood, his secretaries, who 
seemed to cultivate an acquaintance with me by their 



33t> LIFK OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

civilities, and drew from mo what information I could 
give relative to tlie American war, [that is, the bearing 
of the war with France on the American colonies, and 
British interests as connected therewith,] with my senti- 
ments on measures that were jiroposed or advised by- 
others, which gave me the opportunity of recommending 
and enforcing the utility of conquering Canada." 

The policy of fighting France on the side of Germany, 
which had been so much favored by the kings of the 
reigning family, themselves of German origin, Franklin 
objected to, on the ground that it was ineffectual to pro- 
duce any lasting advantages to Great Britain, even if 
victorious, or any real and permanent diminution of the 
power and influence of France ; that it was really fight- 
ing the battles of other European nations, who reaped 
all the benefits, while Britain paid the cost ; and it was 
a policy which Pitt himself had never really approved. 
The harmony of their views on this point may well be 
supposed to have inclined the minister to Franklin's 
opinions respecting Canada, and the importance of wrest- 
ing it from France, as the most effectual if not the only 
mode in which her power could be materially and per- 
manently weakened, to the real benefit of his own coun- 
try. At all events, Franklin's views respecting the con- 
quest of Canada were adopted ; and there is good reason 
for affirming, that the expedition of Wolfe, and the ac- 
quisition of both territory and renown, which it brought 
to the British empire and the British arms, are to be 
ascribed to the political sagacity of Franklin. 

The year 1759 passed on without bringing Franklin's 
provincial mission to a close, though the historical expo- 
sition of the affairs of Pennsylvania, together with the 
conversation and character of Franklin, and other means 
of rectifying opinions in high places, as well as among 
reading and reflecting men generally, were producing 



VISIT TO SCOTLAND. 337 

their legitimate effect, and rendering important aid to his 
professional counsel in preparing his cause for a hearing. 
As that hearing, however, did not yet come on, Franklin 
availed himself of the summer of that ^^ear to visit Scot- 
land, taking his son with him. He had, in the preceding 
February, received from the university of St. Andrew's 
the honorary degree of doctor of laws, and his merits, 
not only in physical philosophy and in politics, but as 
a man of general knowledge and an elegant and forcible 
writer, having been long well understood, he was re- 
ceived with cordial respect by the eminent men of Scot- 
land. David Hume, Henry Home, (better known as 
Lord Kames,) and Dr. Robertson, the historian,' became 
his warm personal friends, as his subsequent correspond- 
ence with them abundantly testifies. At Edinburgh, in 
September, he was '* admitted a burgess and guild- 
brother of that city," says the city record, ** as a mark 
of affectionate respect for a gentleman, whose amiable 
character, greatly-distinguished usefulness, and love to 
all mankind, had long ago reached them across the At- 
lantic ocean ;" and in October the freedom of the city of 
St. Andrew's, also, was conferred upon him. 

Of all the great men whose society he enjoyed in 
Scotland, the warmest personal attachment seems to have 
sprung up between himself and Lord Kames. They 
were congenial spirits ; and when, after spending a 
number of delightful days at his lordship's country-seat 
near the Tweed, Franklin left Scotland for London, his 
noble friend and lady accompanied him through the first 
stage of his journey. The kind and degree of pleasure 
he found in the society of Lord Kames is vividly de- 
scribed in a letter written at London, on the 3d of the 
succeeding January, 1760. After expressing the regret 
of himself and his son at parting with him and Lady 
Kames so soon, he says : ** How much more agreeable 
29 



338 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

would our journey have been, if we coukl have enjoyed 
you as far as York. We could have beguiled the way by 
discoursing on a thousand things, that we now may never 
have an opportunity of considering together; for con- 
versation warms the mind, enlivens the imagination, and 
is continually starting fresh game that is immediately 
pursued and taken, and which would never have oc- 
curred in the duller intercourse of epistolary correspond- 
ence. So that whenever I reflect on the great pleasure 
and advantage I received from the free communication 
of sentiment, in the conversations we had at Kames, and 
in the agreeable little rides to the Tweed-side, I shall 
for ever regret our premature parting." 

Of the gratification he found in the whole of his so- 
journ in Scotland, he speaks, in the same letter, as fol- 
lows : " On the whole, 1 must say I think the time we 
spent there was six weeks of the densest happiness I have 
met with in any part of my life ; and the agreeable and 
instructive society we found there in such j^lenty, has 
left so pleasing an impression on my memory, that, did 
not strong connections draw me elsewhere, I believe 
Scotland would be the country I should choose to spend 
the remainder of my days in." 

One of Franklin's most intimate personal friends in 
London, was Mr. William Strahan, bred a printer, who 
acquired a handsome fortune in his business, and, by his 
talents, intelligence, and probity, became, in 1775, a 
member of Parliament. He had long taken a lively 
interest in the affairs of the American colonies, and when 
the controversies and estrangements came on between 
those colonies and the mother-country, he took an active 
part in all the efforts made to heal difficulties and bring 
about a reconciliation. Shortly after Franklin's arrival 
in London, in 1757, Mr. Strahan had, with Franklin's 
privity, written a very earnest invitation to Mrs. Frank- 



MR. STRAHAN MISS STEVENSON. 339 

lin to visit London w^ith her daughter, durino- her hus- 
band's stay on the business of his mission ; and now, in 
the vv^inter of 1759-'60, his increased regard for Franklin 
led him to urge the latter to send for his family and set- 
tle permanently in England. Among the inducements 
to this step, Mr. Strahan proposed the marriage of his 
son with Franklin's daughter, Sarah; and he put the 
proposal in writing, together with the various consider- 
ations in its favor, that it might, if his friend thought fit, 
be sent to Mrs. Franklin at Philadelphia. 

From Franklin's letter of March 5, 1760, to his wife, 
on this subject, it appears that Mr. Strahan's business 
enabled him " to lay up a thousand pounds every year," 
clear of family expenses and all other charges ; that his 
wife was "a sensible and good woman;" the children 
amiable and well trained ; and " the young man sober, 
ingenious, industrious," and personally agreeable. Frank- 
lin's objections, as stated in conversation with his friend, 
to settling in England, were his " affection to Pennsyl- 
vania and to long-established friendships and connec- 
tions there, and his wife's invincible aversion to crossing 
the seas;" while, without the removal to England, he 
" could not think of parting with his daughter to such a 
distance." Thanking his friend for the esteem implied 
by the proposals, but not promising to communicate them, 
he nevertheless did so, leaving his wife " at liberty to 
answer or not;" requesting for himself, however, the 
knowledge of her sentiments on the subject. 

Among the friendships Franklin formed in England, 
at the period in question, one of the most interesting was 
that with Miss Mary Stevenson, the daughter of his host- 
ess of Craven street. Her character was one of high 
moral worth, and she was gifted with uncommon mental 
abilities. Upon Franklin's becoming an inmate of her 
mother's family, he soon perceived her various merits, 



340 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

and took pleasure in aiding and directing her studies. 
In the spring of 17C0, she resided for some time with a 
relative, at a little distance from London, and during 
that separation she and her distinguished friend ex- 
changed several letters, relating chiefly to her course of 
reading. One of those letters contains suggestions on 
that topic, which most readers, particularly youthful 
ones, would find it advantageous to observe. He advises 
her to read ** with a pen in hand," and to " enter in a 
book," suitably prepared for the purpose, "short hints," 
or abstracts, of whatever she might find striking, whether 
** curious or useful," as the best method of fixing them 
in her mind, either for subsequent use, if practically val- 
uable, or, if relating to things rare and curious, " to adorn 
and improve her conversation ;" and, moreover, always 
to have good dictionaries at hand, for the instant expla- 
nation of words not perfectly understood, particularly 
terms of science and art, so that no j^art of the author's 
meaning may be lost, or knowledge rendered defective, 
and the mental perceptions impaired, by any confusion 
of ideas. 

This advice is believed to be sound; and the method 
of making *' short hints," or condensed abstracts, in the 
reader's own language, much better than that of the 
usual common-place book, to which passages are trans- 
ferred in the very words of the author. The former 
practice may be rendered an efficient mode of mental 
discipline, promoting the habit of discriminative and ac- 
curate thinking, and so strengthening the memory as well 
as the understanding ; while the latter method, though 
occasionally well for the convenient presei'vation of pas- 
sages remarkable for some felicity of expression, or other 
quality of mere form, seems unsuited for any purpose 
of mental training; and though sometimes recommended 
as a mode of cultivating the memory, it seems less fitted 



PERSONAL ABUSE INDEMNITY-MONEY. 341 

to aid that faculty, than to injure it by accustoming it 
to rely on the common-place book rather than its own 
power of retention. 

Franklin's zeal in behalf of the claims of Pennsylva- 
nia, and the ability with which he maintained them, ex- 
cited a rancorous hostility on the part of the Proprieta- 
ries and their retainers ; and to this was added on the 
part of others, the high tory advocates of royal preroga- 
tive and adversaries of colonial privileges, another con- 
fluent current of bitter feeling against him, for the ability 
and effect with which he maintained those privileges and 
the general cause of the colonies. From these two 
sources proceeded not a few political pamphlets and 
newspaper articles, in which, from time to time, he was 
assailed with gross personal abuse, and his motives, pur- 
poses, and habits, calumniously misrepresented. These 
things, however, gave little disturbance to his equanim- 
ity. He was content with the approval of his own con- 
science and the respect and friendship of the men most 
eminent in either South or North Britain for worth and 
abilities, and regarded this personal obloquy with cool 
indifference or silent scorn. Writing from London to 
his wife, in June, 1760, he says : "I am concerned that 
so much trouble should be given you by idle reports 
concerning me. Be satisfied, my dear wife, that while 
I have my senses, and God vouchsafes me his protection, 
I shall do nothing unworthy the character of an honest 
man, and one that loves his family." In another letter 
he says : " Let no one make you uneasy with their idle 
or malicious scribblings, but enjoy yourself and friends, 
and, the comforts of life that God has bestowed on you, 
with a cheerful heart. I am glad their pamphlets give 
you so little concern. I make no other answer to them 
at present, than what appears on the seal of this letter." 
29* 



342 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

That answer was, a dove above a snake coiled and darl- 
ing forth its tongue, with a motto in French, signifying 
that — Innocence surmounts everything. 

In the autumn of this year, (1760,) Franklin received 
a letter from Isaac Norris, Speaker of the Pennsylvania 
Assembly, accompanied by an act authorizing and direct- 
ing him, as provincial agent, to receive and invest, on 
behalf of the province, its share of the moneys recently 
granted by parliament as some indemnity to the Ameri- 
can colonies for the charges they had incurred in 1758, 
beyond what that body admitted to be their fair propor- 
tion, in support of the war. In the act making this 
grant, the Lower Counties (as they were then usually 
called, now the state of Delaware) were joined with 
Pennsylvania, though they were under separate govern- 
ments. The number of men kept in the field by the 
two governments was 2,727, the quota of Pennsylvania 
being 2,446, and that of Delaware 2S1. The whole sum 
apportioned to the two colonies, was twenty-nine thou- 
sand nine hundred and ninety-three pounds sterling, of 
which Pennsylvania's share was nearly twenty-seven 
thousand pounds, and that of Delaware a little over 
three thousand. 

On receiving this money, Franklin placed it in the 
bank of England, till he could invest it in stocks, as he 
soon did, pursuant to the law under which he acted. 
The investment was well made ; but the Assembly, 
moved by some premature rumors of peace, indiscreetly 
ordered the stocks to be sold when so low as to occasion 
considerable loss ; and yet the Penn party, in their ran- 
cor toward Franklin, charged the loss to his misconduct, 
and claimed that he should make it up. 



1 



PAMPHLET ON CANADA. 343 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

PAMPHLET ON CANADA PENNSYLVANIA CASE DECIDED 

— TOUR IN ENGLAND AND WALES NEW WORDS 

NATURAL HISTORY PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS TOUR IN 

HOLLAND ART OF VIRTUE LATENT HEAT WATER 

VAPORIZED BY ELECTRICITY POINTS AND KNOBS 

ARMONICA LITERARY HONORS RETURN HOME. 

Before the close of 1759, the conquest of Canada 
had been achieved, and the island of Guadaloupe been 
taken, by the British. These events in America, with 
the success of the British arms in East India, and the 
overwhelming superiority of the British navy, were fol- 
lowed by indications of approaching peace ; and the 
terms on which that peace should be concluded began to 
occupy the thoughts of leading men both in and out of 
the British cabinet. 

In this condition of public affairs, a pamphlet ap- 
peared, addressed in fact to the duke of Newcastle, then 
premier, and Mr. Pitt, one of the secretaries of state, 
but published under the title of a Letter to Two Ch^eat 
Men, and written by the earl of Bath, better known as 
Mr. Pultney, in which he urged that, whatever conces- 
sions might be made in other quarters, on the conclusion 
of peace, Canada should be retained by Great Britain. 
A reply to this letter soon after came out, anonymously, 
entitled Remarks on the Letter to Tico Great Men, in 
which the writer maintained that Guadaloupe would be 
the more valuable acquisition, and should be retained, 
while Canada should be restored to France. 



344 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

The Remarker was supposed by many to be the cele- 
brated Edmund Burke ; and whether the supposition 
was correct or not, it was good evidence that his per- 
formance was deemed an able one. Having, from a de- 
sire not to seem obtrusive, waited a suitable time for a 
reply from the author of the Z/e^/cr, Franklin took up the 
subject. In one respect, if no more, he was better qual- 
ified to discuss it than either of the other writers, or, in- 
deed, any man in England; and that was, his more pre- 
cise and thorough knowledge of all the material facts 
pertaining to the state of things in America ; of the re- 
sources, wants, progress, and prospects of the colonies ; 
their relations to Canada and to the Indian tribes; the 
features of the country already occupied by the colonial 
settlements, as well as the regions which would invite 
occupancy as soon as new settlements could be made 
with a reasonable expectation of security ; the extent of 
the Indian trade, and its value, together with that of the 
colonies, to the mother-country ; and, in short, all the 
peculiarly American topics bearing on the question. In 
reference, also, to the more general topics, whether drawn 
from history or from the relations of Great Britain to 
the other countries of Europe, or to the Indies East and 
West, wherever the commercial interests of the British 
empire were involved, he showed himself to be at least 
as well informed as any man, whether in or out of the 
public councils, who undertook to discuss the question, 
in either its commercial or its diplomatic bearings ; 
and he handled it with an ability and pungency, and at 
the same time v/ith a courtesy and fairness, which drew 
from an opponent, in another anonymous pamphlet, 
written doubtless, though not avowedly, by the reinarlier^ 
a declaration that he considered the author of the Canada 
Pamphlet, as being of all the advocates of the retention 
of Canada, "clearly the ablest, the most ingenious, the 



CANADA PAMPHLET. 345 

most dexterous, and the most perfectly acquainted with 
the strong and weak points of the argument," and as 
having " said everything, and everything in the best man- 
ner, that the cause could bear." 

A brief sketch of the general scope and tenor of this 
performance, is all that can be here given ; but this, at 
least, is demanded by justice to its author, not only to 
illustrate the attitude he then presented, and the estima- 
tion in which he was then held, as a public man, but also 
in connection with other evidence subsequently furnished 
from time to time, as the interests and rights of the 
American colonies grew in importance, and became 
more and more deeply affected by the policy of the 
mother-country, to aid in showing something of the 
extent to which those principles, whereon the colonies 
at last took their stand in opposition to that policy, and 
the arguments by which those principles were unfolded 
and enforced, are traceable to Franklin, and to the influ- 
ence he exerted on opinion both in England and in 
America. 

The question discussed in the pamj^hlet before us, let 
it be remembered, was, which of her two conquests, the 
island of Guadaloupe, or the province of Canada and 
its dependencies, Great Britain should retain. Franklin 
commences with a compliment to the ability and cour- 
tesy of the tv/o preceding writers, and an apology for 
his taking up the discussion, drawn from " the long si- 
lence" of the author of the Letter, followed by some 
well-placed observations on the importance of the ques- 
tion at issue, and the wisdom of thoroughly canvassing 
it, without delay, in order that the government might 
be prepared, with clear and well-settled views in regard 
to it, to enter on the negotiations by which it v/ould be 
decided at the close of the war. 

The first point relates to the right of a nation, on the 



346 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

successful termination of a just war, to demand cessions 
from its enemy, by way of indemnity for the expenses 
forced upon the former, and for the future security of 
any exposed part of her dominions. This right is illus- 
trated by various examples from history and modern 
treaties between the European states ; and the wisdom 
of insisting upon it in the case under consideration, is 
enforced by a striking statement of the nature and 
extent of the colonial frontiers and the Canadian terri- 
tory, the relations between them, the position and char- 
acter of the Indian tribes, the influence exercised among 
them by French missionaries and traders, and the whole 
French policy in Canada and Louisiana ; all which 
considerations demonstrated the necessity of retaining 
Canada, in order to avoid future wars with their heavy 
expenditures, from causes arising in that quarter, and to 
insure the safety and prosperity of the colonies and their 
value to the mother-country. 

The second point relates to the insufficiency of the 
method insisted on by his opponent and usually pursued, 
of block-liouses and forts, however strongly garrisoned, 
or however judiciously placed, to defend a frontier nearly 
two thousand miles in length, covered with vast primeval 
forests, swarming with savage tribes familiar with every 
part of them, and threading them in every direction, in 
small bands, moving with a celerity that baffled any pos- 
sible effort of regular troops to pursue them, or even to 
discover their trail, unless by accident, and spreading 
desolation and terror through the new settlements. Such 
military posts would, indeed, be of some service for 
guarding particular passes, and covering a few places 
here and there threatened by the regular troops of the 
enemy, and were of still greater use as depots of provis- 
ions and warlike stores, but were utterly ineffectual to 
protect the general frontier, or prevent those border en- 



CANADA PAMPHLET. 347 

croachments and quarrels that would be perpetually 
occurring in such remote regions and embroiling the two 
nations; whereas the retention of Canada "implied every 
security," and would at once and for ever cut off all haz- 
ard of future wars between France and England, from 
causes originating in that seed-bed of hostilities, which, 
if restored, would become more and more fruitful, de- 
manding a continually-increasing military establishment 
and a rapidly-augmenting expenditure. If Canada be 
retained, says Franklin, " we shall then, as it were, have 
our back against a wall ; the seacoast will be easily pro- 
tected by our superior naval power; and the force now 
employed in that part of the world may be spared for 
other service, so that both the offensive and defensive 
strength of the British empire will be greatly increased." 
The third point relates to " the blood and treasure 
spent in America," by the mother-country, which the 
Remarker had said was expended only in the cause of 
the colonies. This notion, a very prevalent one both 
then and afterward, Franklin met with a full and clear 
exposure of its fallacy and injustice. He did not pre- 
tend that the colonies were " altogether unconcerned," 
for their people were then warmly attached to the moth- 
er-country ; and they not only took pride in her glory 
and prosperity, in peace and war, but had " exerted 
themselves beyond their strength and against their evi- 
dent interest," in her behalf. But their loyalty "had 
made against them;" and for no better reason than the 
fact, that the battles of Great Britain had been fought in 
America, the allegation had been made that the colonists 
were *' the authors of a war, carried on for their advan- 
tage only." No individual and no public body of any 
kind, in the colonies, had any individual or separate in- 
terest in the retention of Canada; they wished for no 
lands but those they already possessed, and for no con- 



348 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

quests, except only for the sake of peace and security 
within their own borders. Indeed, so far as their pecu- 
niary interests, in this particular, were concerned, the 
acquisition of additional territory would be a detriment, 
by bringing more land into market, and thus contributing 
to retard the growth of their existing settlements. The 
mother-country, on the contrary, had a direct and sub- 
stantial interest in this increase of territory and cheap 
lands, through the influence it would necessarily exercise 
in restricting the inhabitants to agriculture as their great 
occupation ; and thus, by enlarging the demand for the 
manufactures of the mother-country, nourish her com- 
merce and navigation, and augment her wealth and her 
naval power. 

Besides, it was unjust and invidious, for another rea- 
son, to represent the blood and treasure spent in the war, 
as being spent in the cause of the colonies only. The 
colonies were, in truth, but part of the frontiers of the 
empire; and, so long as they preserved their allegiance, 
had as perfect a claim to protection as any county in 
England. The acquisition of Canada was not sought to 
gratify "a vain ambition" on the part of the colonies, as 
the Remarker had insinuated ; it was sought for the ben- 
efit of the whole empire, and such would be the result 
of retaining it. Should the kingdom engage in a war 
for the protection of her manufacturing and commercial 
interests, would it be just or decent to charge "the blood 
and treasure" expended in it, to the account of " the 
weavers of Yorkshire, the cutlers of Sheffield, or the 
button-makers of Birmingham" ? 

Under the fourth head, the argument in favor of the 
extension of the colonial settlements toward the Missis- 
sippi and along the great lakes, and the advantages that 
would result to the mother-country from their vast in- 
crease of jjopulation and general j^rosperity, is expanded 



WESTERN SETTLEMENT. 349 

and enforced with peculiar ability and the exhibition of 
the most statesmanlike views. The Remai'Jcer had ob- 
jected that the interior of that broad territory could not 
be reached for the purposes of trade to the benefit of 
Great Britain, and that its population, soon ceasing to 
have any intercourse with the mother-country, would 
become useless if not dangerous to her interests. In 
reply, it is shown that the objection proceeded from 
ignorance of the character of that country and the re- 
markable facilities furnished by its rivers and lakes for 
an internal trade of greater extent, activity, and produc- 
tiveness, than any other region of the earth. In illustra- 
tion of this point, reference is made to the trade, long 
carried on, for British account, in the most interior parts 
of Europe, against great natural difficulties, and the still 
greater embarrassments arising from the clashing legis- 
lation of numerous states ; and a comprehensive and 
masterly view is added of the various routes of commerce 
through Asia and Europe in ancient and modern times. 
The Indian trade, also, is adduced to show that, in point 
of fact, that interior was actually traversed in every di- 
rection, and that the canoe was but the precursor of the 
larger craft destined to swarm on those unrivalled wa- 
ters. It is thus demonstrated that, while the colonial 
population would be spreading westward, the manufac- 
tures of England, with whatever merchandise her ships 
might bring, would certainly follow the people, who 
would adhere to agriculture as their main occupation, 
till those vast and fertile regions should be brought un- 
der cultivation ; that manufactures could not naturally 
grow up in such a country, inasmuch as the population 
would be too sparse for that, while land was cheap ; that 
the climate and soil were so varied as to invite the culti- 
vation, not only of food of every kind in the greatest 
abundance, but of a wide variety of raw products for 
30 



350 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

manufacture in England ; that the result to Great Britain 
would be a rapid increase of numbers, wealth, arts, and 
power, on her own soil, as well as in her colonies ; a 
navigation that would cover the seas, and a navy to ride 
with it round the world. 

Compared with such vast benefits to the mother-coun- 
try, the natural fruit of the permanent possession of 
Canada, and of the consequent security and growth of the 
American colonies, all that the possession of Guadaloupe 
could promise was insignificant indeed ; and as to the 
danger of disaffection and separation on the part of the 
colonies — a point much magnified on the other side — 
it was but imaginary, so long as the imperial govern- 
ment should be administered with ordinary justice and 
discretion, and the charters of the colonies, together with 
their local laws and usages for" the regulation of their 
own internal concerns, should be respected. The policy 
of ancient Rome, in this particular, was an example of 
wisdom worth imitating. She left the countries she 
subdued to their own institutions, independent of each 
other and tranquil, so long as they preserved their alle- 
giance to her. In pursuance of this policy, she went 
even so far as to release the Grecian states from the 
Macedonian yoke, and give them their separate inde- 
pendence and their own laws, not retaining even the ap- 
pointment of their governors. Rome, by this magnan- 
imous and therefore wise policy, not caring for the 
ostentatious but irritating parade of sovereignty, enjoyed 
the trade of the dependent nations, received their tribute, 
and swayed the world, without a standing army, until 
"the loss of liberty and the corruption of manners in the 
sovereign state subverted her dominion." 

But the policy of the Remarker would leave Canada 
to the French, to check the dangerous growth of the 
American colonies. " A modest word, this c/^ec/^," says 



CANADA PAMPHLET. 351 

Franklin — "for the massacre of men, women, and chil- 
dren." To restore Canada on such ground, would be 
to invite the French and their savage allies to renew 
their barbarities, and the stain of such blood-guiltiness 
would rest on Britain. Better than this would be the 
Egyptian policy of old, to strangle at its birth every 
male-child born in the colonies. But the danger of sep- 
aration, and the narrow jealousy which suggested the 
policy of restoring Canada, was idle and unjust, except 
only on the supposition of *' the most grievous tyranny 
and oppression" on the part of the mother-country. 
" People," says Franklin, " who have property to lose, 
and privileges to be endangered, are generally disposed 
to be quiet, and to bear much, rather than hazard all. 
While the government is mild and just — while impor- 
tant civil and religious rights are secure — such subjects 
will be dutiful and obedient. The waves do not rise but 
when the wind blows." 

This able pamphlet concludes with a statistical exhibit 
of the commercial value of Guadaloupe and the colonies, 
demonstrating the superiority of the latter, and showing 
that, if tropical produce and trade were to be the con- 
trolling objects, the possession of Guadaloupe was far 
less desirable than that of French Guyana and Cayenne, 
on the neighboring mainland of South America, which, 
from the small number of the French there, could be 
much more easily occupied by a British population, and 
held more quietly under British authority, than Guada- 
loupe, fully peopled as it was by the French, who would 
always be disposed to throw off the jurisdiction of for- 
eigners and return to their original, natural connections. 

Such is an imperfect outline of this able, enlightened 
performance. It exerted a very extensive and powerful 
influence on the public mind, and unquestionably con- 
tributed much to shape the course of the ministry in 



352 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

conducting those negonations, which ended in obtaining 
Canada and peace. The consequences amply sustained 
the views of Franklin, and fully vindicated his sagacity, 
in everything, except the justice and moderation of the 
British government ; and that single exception could not 
have been made, had George Grenville, Lord North, and 
their respective colleagues, manifested, in subsequent 
years, half the true statesmanship of the provincial agent 
of Pennsylvania. 

At length, in June, 1760, the cause committed to 
Franklin's charge by the Assembly of Pennsylvania, 
was argued before the board of trade. The particular 
case on which the argument was had, was an act of the 
Assembly, duly signed by Governor Denny, entitled, 
*' An act Jo?- granting to his majesty the smn of one htm- 
dred thousand founds, striking the same in hills of cred- 
it, and sinking the hills hij a tax on all estates real and 
personal.'" This included, of course, the Proprietary 
estates ; and though the decision of the board required 
some few formal amendments of the act, for the sake of 
greater precision in some of its details, yet, on the great 
point, it was explicit, that the estates of the Proprietaries 
ought to be assessed and taxed in the same manner and 
to the same extent as all other estates in the province. 

Though the hearing took place in June, yet the report 
of the whole matter, with the decision thereon by the 
board, to the privy council, together with other formali- 
ties appertaining to it, detained Franklin in London, as 
he remarks in a subsequent letter to Lord Kames, until 
the middle of September. 

Although the leading object of Franklin's mission to 
England was now accomplished, yet other affairs of the 
province kept him still in that country ; and during a 
short period of leisure following the attainment of the 
object mentioned, he made another excursion, with his 



TOUR IN WALES AND WEST OF ENGLAND. 353 

son, to the northern parts of the kingdom, taking a route 
somewhat west of his former one to Scotland, and re- 
turning tlirough Wales. Writing at Coventry, under 
date of the 27th of September, to Lord Kames, he states 
that he had intended, when the excursion was originally- 
planned, in the preceding summer, to cross over to Ire- 
land, and having made the tour of that island, pass from 
one of its northern ports into the southwest of Scotland, 
and so make a circuit to Edinburgh, for the sake of once 
more seeing his friends in that neighborhood ; but that 
the litigation with the Proprietary had delayed him so 
long in London, as already stated, that he was obliged 
to relinquish the more important part of his design. 

In a letter to David Hume, of the same date, Franklin 
expresses the gratification it had given him to learn that 
Mr. Hume's opinions concerning America had recently 
become more favorable than they had been ; for, says 
he, "I think it of importance to our general welfare, that 
the people of this nation should have right notions of us; 
and I know of no one who has it more in his power to 
rectify those notions, than Mr. Hume." That distin- 
guished writer had then recently put forth his able 
Essay on the Jealousy of Commerce ; and Franklin, in 
the same letter, expresses the pleasure it had given him, 
particularly for the following reason : " I think," says 
Franklin, "it can not but have a good effect in promoting 
a certain interest, too little thought of by selfish man, 
and scarcely ever mentioned, so that we hardly have a 
name for it : I mean the interest of humanity, or the 
common good of mankind. But I hope, particularly 
from that essay, an abatement of the jealousy, that 
reigns here, of the commerce of the colonies." 

The change in some of Mr. Hume's sentiments rela- 
ting to America, as mentioned above, had been pro- 
duced, in great part at least, by the Canada Pamphlet, 
30* 



354 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

which Franklin had sOTt him ; and it seems, from the 
letter already cited, that Mr. Hume, in another referring 
to it, had, with the frankness of friendship, criticised 
some of the expressions employed in the pamphlet. 
Among these were the words pejorate, colonize, and un- 
shakable. After thanking his friend for his admonition, 
and saying that he should give up the words, for the 
reason that they were not recognised by usage, he ad- 
mits the position that new words should not be coined, 
when there are already old ones sufficiently expressive; 
but he adds the wish that usage would give a readier 
sanction to new terms, formed by compounding such as 
already belong to the language and are universally un- 
derstood ; and he refers to the German, as well as the 
Latin and Greek, to sanction the practice; remarking, 
that words compounded of such as are already familiar, 
would be better than any that could be borrowed from 
other tongues, inasmuch as their full meaning would be 
instantly and completely apprehended. 

Much of this we believe to be sound doctrine, if cau- 
tiously applied. Still, Franklin's modesty, or courtesy, 
led him, we think, to defer to Mr. Hume's authority 
somewhat beyond the true rule. Not that we would ask 
the mint-stamp on pejorate ; for, to cite but one example, 
having deter ior ate, the other seems needless, though 
equally legitimate in its formation, each being originally 
derived from the comparative degree of a Latin adjec- 
tive, the old word through the French, the other directly 
from its Roman primitive. As to colonize, however, it 
is not only in common and unquestioned use, in these 
days, by the best writers, but it was so, long before the 
year 1760 ] probably as long before as the condition 
and political relations of communities called colonies 
were understood by Englishmen, or the planting of them 
wns the snbiect of discourse in the FnoUsh lansfuaffe ; 



I 



NEW WORDS. 355 

and in its vocabulary there is not a word more regular 
and legitimate, in form or use. 

We do not intend to enter, here, into a philological 
dissertation ; but it may be allowable to remark, that, 
when the progress of knowledge and of society produces 
new facts and truths, or new institutions, then the very 
design and end of all language demand new words to 
express the new ideas, and to discourse with clearness 
and precision concerning the new subjects of thought. 
In this way it is that the vocabularies of all tongues have 
been extended ; and all that sound principle requires is, 
that the new terms shall be formed in accordance with 
the established laws of the language to which they are 
added. Even when subjects of thought, not essentially 
and strictly new, are placed in unusual relations, and 
new terms, if not absolutely indispensable, become desi- 
rable, for the more exact, forcible, or graceful expression 
of the ideas suggested by the varied aspects of the sub- 
ject, the languages of all civilized nations have freely ad- 
mitted them, not from caprice, nor even for convenience 
alone, nor only for the yet higher purpose of giving style 
new attractions by giving it a more varied power of ex- 
pression, or an easier flow, but also as being both the 
instruments and proofs of greater accuracy of thought and 
increasing intellectual culture; and this augmentation 
of the means of communicating ideas is one of the pro- 
cesses, perhaps the most efficient one, by which the civ- 
ilization and refinement of nations are advanced. 

During his residence in London, though he was unable 
to give any systematic attention to philosophical studies, 
yet he availed himself of occasional opportunities fur- 
nished by the delay of his business, to perform an exper- 
iment, or attend a meeting of professed cultivators of 
science, or write to a correspondent on some topic of his 
favorite pursuit. In .Tune of 1758, he addressed Buch a 
20* 



356 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

letter to John Linin^of Charleston, South Carolina, a 
correspondent of that class, on the cooling of the surfaces 
of bodies by evaporation. This topic had been started 
before Franklin left home on his present mission ; and 
in the letter now mentioned, he relates an experiment 
he had recently exhibited at Cambridge, in conjunction 
with Professor Hadley, of the university there, in which, 
by successive wettings of the glass bulb of a thermome- 
ter with ether, and permitting each wetting to evaporate, 
as it rapidly did, being aided by blowing on the bulb 
with a pair of bellows, the mercury in the tube was sent 
down twenty-five degrees below freezing point, and ice. 
nearly a fourth of an inch thick, was formed on the bulb, 
" From this experiment," says Franklin, " one may see 
the possibility of freezing a man to death, on a warm 
summer-day, if he were to stand in a passage, through 
which the wind blew briskly, and were wet frequently 
with ether, a spirit more inflammable than brandy, or 
common spirits of wine." 

The principle thus demonstrated Franklin applies, as 
his habit was, to various cases of practical importance. 
Many a person has received great injury to his health, 
from seeking, when much heated and wet with perspira- 
tion, to refresh himself in such a passage, by having his 
body too rapidly cooled down by evaporation from its 
surface. On the other hand, by this same law of nature, 
the husbandman, while gathering his harvests in the field 
under a burning sun, is protected from a heat that would 
overpower him, if it were not carried off by evaporation 
from his perspiring body. On the same principle, water, 
milk, butter, or anything else, may be cooled in vessels 
wrapped with cloths, wetted often enough to keep up an 
active evaporation ; and so, too, local inflammation on 
the human body, whether occasioned by bruises, boils, 
or other hot tumors, may be cooled, and pain diminished. 



EVAPORATION TIDES. 357 

by laying on linen kept wet with spirit, which is better 
than water, for this purpose, because it evaporates faster. 
In the summer of 1760, in several interesting letters 
to Miss Stevenson, then at Wanstead, a little distance 
from London, Franklin explains; for her instruction, the 
action of tides in rivers, both the flow and ebb taking 
place in the form of tidal waves, the top of each wave, 
that is to say, high-water, reaching successive places at 
successive points of time, so as to make the surface of 
the river present, in fact, a succession of curves. In 
another of these letters, speaking of inquiries into the 
character and habits of insects — a study to which his 
yoLing friend was devoting part of her time — he illus- 
trates the utility of such inquiries, by references to the 
honey-bee. the cochineal insect, the silk-worm, and other 
instances ; and relates the method which the great Swe- 
dish naturalist, Linnaeus, suggested, for protecting the 
green timber in the dockyards of Sweden from a worm 
by which large quantities had been materially injured. 
Linnaeus having detected the origin of the worms from 
eggs deposited in the small crevices in the surfaces of 
timber, and the fly which deposited the eggs, and having 
ascertained accurately the period when the eggs were 
deposited, recommended that, some days before the com- 
mencement of that jieriod, all the green timber should 
be jjlaced under water till the period had passed by. 
The timber was thus secured from injury, in that form, 
by pursuing the course recommended, only once with the 
same timber ; for the process of seasoning rendered the 
timber, by the next year, too hard for the worm to pen- 
etrate. Though the utility of this, as well as other 
branches of natural history, is thus explicitly recognised 
by Franklin, yet he felt that there was a certain fitness, 
or propriety, which should regulate the attention to such 
pursuits, according to individual position and the pres- 



358 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

sure of other obliaatio^: and he closes with the follow- 
ing admonition, for the sake of which, in part, the letter 
has been cited : — 

" There is, however," says Franklin, *' a prudent 
moderation to be used in studies of this kind. The 
knowledge of nature may be ornamental, and it may be 
useful ; but if, to attain an eminence in that, we neglect 
the knowledge and practice of essential duties, we de- 
serve reprehension. For there is no rank in natural 
knowledge, of equal dignity and importance with that 
of being a good parent, a good child, a good husband or 
wife, a good neighbor or friend, a good subject or citizen 
— that is, in short, a good Christian. Nicholas Gim- 
crack, therefore, who neglected the care of his family, to 
pursue butterflies, was a just object of ridicule, and we 
must give him up as fair game to the satirist." 

During his journeys in England and Scotland, Frank- 
lin took occasion to inquire, among other things, into the 
condition of their hospitals, with a view to the benefit 
of the hospital which he had helped to establish and 
manage in Philadelphia ; and in replying, under date of 
February 26, 1761, to Hugh Roberts, a co-manager of 
that institution, he informs him that he should send, by 
the same ship that would take his letter, various tran- 
scripts of regulations and accounts given him at different 
English and Scotch hospitals, from which useful hints 
might perhaps be taken in regard to management and 
expenditure ; and that he hoped to obtain some contri- 
butions of money. His friend was also a member of the 
Junto, and in his letter had spoken of his attending the 
meetings of the club occasionally. Franklin replies that 
he should do it oftener ; that the members all loved and 
resjDected him; that "people are apt to grow strange 
and not understand one another so well, when they meet 
but seldom;" that for himself, he loved cheerful com- 



VISIT TO HOLLAND HUME. 359 

pany as well as ever, while at the same time he enjoyed 
with a higher relish " the grave observations and wise 
sentences" of the conversation of cheerful old men, ripe 
with experience. 

Being still detained in England, he took an opportu- 
nity, in the summer of 1761, to visit Holland and Flan- 
ders. No account of this visit remains, except a brief 
letter to his wife, dated at Utrecht, September 14, 1761, 
in whicli he tells her that, "having seen almost all the 
principal places, and the things worthy of notice, we [he 
and his son] are on our return to London," where he 
intended to arrive in time to witness the coronation of 
George III. He adds : '* We are in good health, and 
have had a great deal of pleasure, and received a good 
deal of information in this tour, that may be useful when 
we return to America." 

In January, 1762, Franklin, in answer to a written re- 
quest from Mr. Hume, wrote him a minute description 
of the manner in which lightning-rods should be made 
and attached to buildings. In his reply, dated the 10th 
of May following, Mr. Hume, after expressing his thanks, 
and referring to some other matters, pays the following 
tribute to Franklin's worth and eminence : " I am very 
sorry that you intend soon to leave our hemisphere. 
America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, su- 
gar, indigo, &c. ; but you are the first philosopher, and 
indeed the first great man of letters, for whom we are 
beholden to her. It is our own fault that we have not 
kept him ; whence it appears that we do not agree with 
Solomon, that wisdom is above gold ; for we take care 
never to send back an ounce of the latter which we once 
lay our fingers upon." 

In March of the same year he received a letter from 
his wife, announcing the death of her mother, Mrs. Read, 
at a very advanced age. The following passage from 



360 LIFE OB' BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Franklin's reply, wlll^ive another illustration of the 
ready sympathy and warmth of his affections : " I con- 
dole with you most sincerely," says he to his wife, " on 
the death of our good mother, being extremely sensible 
of the distress and affliction it must have given you. 
Your comfort will be, that no care was wanting on your 
part toward her, and that she had lived as long as this 
life could afford her any rational enjoyment. It is, I am 
sure, a satisfaction to me, that I can not charge myself 
with having ever failed in one instance of duty and re- 
spect to her, during the many years that she called me 
son;" and after a passing reference to the time of his 
return home, he adds, " God grant us a happy meeting." 
Writing to Lord Karnes, under a little earlier date, to 
thank him for a work entitled Introduction to the Art of 
Thinking, originally written by that nobleman for the 
benefit of his own children while pursuing their early 
studies, and sent by him, on its publication, to Franklin, 
the latter, in his reply, makes the following remarks : 
" To produce the number of valuable men necessary in 
a nation for its prosperity, there is much more hope from 
early institution than from reformation. And, as the 
power of a single man, in particular situations of influ- 
ence, to do national service, is often immensely great, a 
w^-iter can hardly conceive of the good he may be doing, 
when ensraffed in works of this kind." He then refers 
again to his long-meditated work, (an outline of which 
has been presented in a former part of this book,) on the 
Art of Virtue, declaring that **it is not a mere ideal 
work;" that having "first planned it in 1732," he had 
made use of it himself, and induced others to do so, with 
beneficial effect ; that he had been accumulating materi- 
als for it, from time to time, ever since; and that he in- 
tended to avail himself of his " first leisure" to complete 
it, on his return to his own country. But the demand 



ART OF VIRTUE. 361 

of the public for his services, growing more urgent as 
their value became more apparent, the pressure of pub- 
lic business, instead of allov^'ing him the leisure he had 
hoped for, became more engrossing than ever, and this 
long-meditated plan was never executed. 

His own view of the need and the probable usefulness 
of such a work he explains in the letter just cited, by- 
saying, substantially, that there are many persons whose 
lives are unprofitable, or pernicious, not so much from 
any settled wickedness of motive, or systematic design, 
as from accident and ignorance — from not comprehend- 
ing, in season, the necessary tendencies of early habits, 
or their own power to control and reform bad habits ; 
that such persons would willingly, as the long list of 
their broken resolutions show, have persevered in the 
endeavor to become upright and respectable men, useful 
to themselves, their families, and society, if, in addition 
to precept, they had been shown lioio to obey the pre- 
cept — if the rules and principal details of right conduct 
had been placed distinctly before them, so that they 
might know precisely the particular acts they were to do 
every day, and which, when done, would constitute a 
well-spent day ; that this process is virtually the same 
as that which is followed in training men to every one 
of the mechanical arts, and all other practical occupa- 
tions. If a man, as he says, would become a painter, 
navigator, or architect, it is not enough that he is advised 
and convinced that it would be for his advantage to be 
one ; but he must be also taught the particular principles 
of his art, as well as its methods of working, and espe- 
cially the use of his tools by actually handling them 
every day, for a series of years, till he shall have ac- 
quired the habit of handling them skilfully and success- 
fully. So, the art of virtue is a practical matter, and 
has its appropriate instruments, and manner of employ- 
31 



S62 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ing them ; and, to use^^ own words, "to expect people 
to be good, just, temperate, and so forth, without s?wwing 
them 7iow to hecome so, seems like the ineffectual charity 
mentioned by the apostle, which consisted in saying to 
the hungry, cold, and naked, * Be ye fed, be yc wanned, 
he yc clothed,^ without showing them how they could get 
food, fire, or clothing." 

The want of time to execute such a work as Franklin 
had thus conceived and would have produced, is, we 
think, to be regretted. When, on the one hand, we con- 
sider with what power prevalent usages and manners act 
on personal habits and character — how deeply the gen- 
eral tone of thought and feeling abroad in society affect 
individual views of duty, and of the true ends of life — 
how few, especially at the early age when only can much 
effect be ordinarily expected from any method of moral 
training- have sufficient intelligence, or self-directinor 
power, to frame or follow a plan of self-discipline com- 
prehending the whole of life and such an employment 
of their faculties and ojDportunities as may warrant 
a reasonable expectation of any considerable amount 
of beneficial results — and how many, tlierefore, en- 
counter life piecemeal, as it were, running a career of 
unconnected efforts and isolated enterprises, and exhib- 
iting, at the close, a saddening spectacle of energies 
wasted, and talents producing no permanently-valuable 
results, simply for the want of well-defined and consist- 
ent aims; and then, on the other hand, when we reflect 
on the method contemplated by Franklin, for assist- 
ing the youth of each generation to train themselves 
to both virtuous habits and consistent action, in plying 
their various callings and pursuing the lawful objects 
of life — when we reflect on these things, and advert to 
the rich experience, varied observation, and profound 
sagacity, from which the rules and lessons of his work 



GLASS AND ELECTRICITY. 363 

would have been drawn, we can not resist the conviction 
that the fulfilment of the design in question, would have 
presented a method of self examination and self-disci- 
pline more thoroughly practical, in both form and spirit, 
as well as more efficient in producing beneficent results, 
by its influence on manners, habits, motives, conduct, 
and the general well-being of private and domestic life, 
than anything of the same class and design that has yet 
been furnished. 

Among Franklin's cotemporaries, one of the most 
enlightened and successful experimenters in electricity, 
was Ebenezer Kinnersley, of Philadelphia, an old friend 
and correspondent. In a long letter, dated at London, 
February 20, 1762, replying to a similar one, on elec- 
trical topics, Franklin confirms the experiments of his 
friend, showing that glass, which, at the ordinary tem- 
perature, is one of the most perfect non-conductors of 
electricity, is rendered permeable by it, when expanded 
by heat; and in the same letter Franklin broaches the 
idea that all bodies contain a specific quantity of heat, 
or caloric, diffused through their substance, and varying 
in amount according to density and arrangement of parts, 
but quiescent and not affecting sensation, till excited and 
evolved by some external agency — an idea since proved 
to have been well founded, and the basis of what has 
been designated as the theory of latent heat. He was 
led to this idea by simply considering the manner of ob- 
taining heat and fire by rubbing together two pieces of 
dry wood, by hammering metals, and by the sudden and 
forcible collision of flint and steel ; facts which, though 
so long known, seem never before to have suggested any 
philosophical induction. 

The fact that even a small amount of electrical fire, as 
obtained in the laboratory, yields heat enough to convert 
water into vapor, is also communicated in the same let- 



364 LIFE OP J5ENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ter. The way in -vvliich he detected this fact, he relates 
as follows : " Water reduced to vapor is said to occupy 
fourteen thousand times its former space. I have sent a 
charge through a small glass tube that has borne it well 
while empty, but, when filled first with water, was shat- 
tered in pieces and driven all about the room. Finding 
no part of the water on the table, I suspected it to have 
been reduced to vapor; and was confirmed in that sus- 
picion afterward, when I had filled a like tube with ink 
and laid it on a sheet of clean paper, whereon, after the 
explosion, I could find neither any moisture nor any sully 
from the ink." He then suggests that this fact may ex- 
plain the eflfects sometimes produced by lightning on 
trees when they are reduced, by the stroke, to ** fine 
splinters like a broom ; the sap-vessels being so many 
tubes containing a watery fluid, which, when reduced to 
vapor, rends the tubes lengthwise." He adds : ** Per- 
haps it is this rarefaction of the fluids in animals killed 
by lightning, or electricity, which, by separating its fibres, 
renders the flesh so tender and apt so much sooner to 
putrefy ;" and that " much of the damage done by light- 
ning to walls of brick or stone may sometimes be owing 
to the explosion of water lodging upon them or in their 
crevices." 

Notwithstanding the full and clear expositions Frank- 
lin had long before given, of the diflferent electrical 
action of hnohs and points, yet some of the few electri- 
cians of reputation then possessed by England still 
maintained that lightning-rods terminating upward with 
knobs were better protectors than pointed ones, for the 
alleged reason that ** points invite the stroke." To this 
he replied that, although points draw the electrical fire 
at greater distances than knobs, **in the gradual and 
silent way," yet that an explosion, or violent stroke, in 
which the danger lies, is drawn farthest by the knoh, as 



POINTS AND KNOBS. S65 

experiments had undeniably demonstrated. The above- 
named fallacy is adverted to in the letter to Mr. Kinners- 
ley ; and in an earlier letter to M. Dalibard, of Paris, 
Franklin, referring to that and other fallacies, observes 
that his views respecting these rods seemed to have been 
extensively misconceived, and the principles from which 
they derived their protecting power only half understood ; 
that their more common and valuable effect resulted from 
the very fact objected to by the hnoh-men, inasmuch as 
the jpoint usually disarmed the thunder-cloud, by silently 
drawing its electricity from it to such an extent as to 
prevent explosion, and yet, also, in case of explosion, it 
conducted the formidable element certainly and safely 
to the ground. " Yet," says he, " whenever my opinion 
is examined in Europe, nothing is considered but the 
probability of those rods preventing a stroke or explo- 
sion, which is only z, part of the use I had proposed for 
them ; and the other part, their conducting a stroke 
which they may happen not to prevent, seems to be 
totally forgotten, though of equal importance and advan- 
tage." 

Among the many good gifts Franklin had received 
from the " Former of his body and Father of his spirit," 
was an uncommonly fine ear for music ; and this, acting 
on the mechanical faculty, which he also possessed in 
liberal measure, led him to devise and construct a new 
musical instrument, of which he gave a minute and full 
description, in a letter, dated at London, July 13, 1762, 
to the celebrated Italian philosopher, John Baptist Bec- 
caria, who not only translated his papers on electricity, 
but defended his doctrines on that subject, and with 
whom he corresponded for many years. The particular 
occasion which suggested this trial of his mechanical 
dexterity and skill in music, was the delight he had 
taken in listening to some performances on the instru- 
31* 



366 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ment, then recently introduced among the musical circles, 
called the musical glasses. 

Some years before, an Irish gentleman, by the name 
of Puckendge, having often observed '* the sweet tone 
that is drawn from a drinking-glass by passing a wet 
finger round its brim," conceived the idea of arranging 
a number of glass goblets, so varied in size and thick- 
ness as to yield the notes of the common gamut in reg- 
ular succession, and so firmly secured, each by its foot, 
on a table or frame, as to be readily reached and touched 
by the performer. To aid in tuning these glasses, wa- 
ter, in such quantity as might be needful, was poured in. 
The house in which the inventor resided, unfortunately 
taking fire, he, with his instrument, was consumed. A 
Mr. Del aval, however, an ingenious man, and a member 
of the Royal Society, having seen and heard the musical 
glasses, made another instrument, with a better chosen 
set of glasses ; and this was the first one that came to 
the notice of Franklin. " Being charmed," says he, "by 
the sweetness of its tones and the music produced from 
it, I wished only to see the glasses disposed in a more 
convenient form, and brought together in a narrow com- 
pass, so as to admit a greater number of tones," by in- 
creasincr the number of grlasses. 

After various trials, in both the form of the glasses and 
the mode of arranging them, he finally adopted a set of 
glass bowls or hemispheres, thirty-six in number, regu- 
larly diminishing from a diameter of nine inches for the 
largest to three inches for the smallest one, and dimin- 
ishing, also, in thickness, from nearly an inch at the 
centre to about the tenth of an inch at the brim, for the 
largest, and so in proportion for the others; all arranged 
upon an iron spindle, tapering to suit the size of the 
glasses, and passing through sockets of cork, fitted in 
the openings at their centres, the largest glass being 



THE ARMONICA. 367 

placed first on the spindle, the next in size placed next, 
and so far within the first as to leave about an inch of 
rim projecting, and accessible to the finger; and so, in 
regular succession of sizes, and due proportion in all 
respects, with the others. All the glasses being thus 
adjusted, the spindle, projecting a few inches at each 
end, was laid horizontally upon brass gudgeons fitted to 
a frame, supported by four legs, and covered with a 
mahogany case, opening and shutting like that of a 
pianoforte. At the larger end, outside of the gudgeon 
and the case, the spindle presented a square shank, to 
which was fitted a wheel connected with a treadle under 
the case, by means of which the performer turned the 
spindle and its glasses wath his foot, just as a spinner 
turns her wheel. A good deal of grinding and polishing 
was necessary to bring the glasses into perfect unison ; 
a cup of water and a sponge were provided, for the per- 
former to wet his fingers from time to time; and, in or- 
der to bring out the finest tones, the glasses were to turn 
from, not toward, the ends of the fingers. 

At the close of his long and minute letter to Beccaria, 
from which we have taken only such particulars as were 
necessary to give an idea of the instrument, and the in- 
genuity displayed in its construction, Franklin, speaking 
of its merits, says : " Its tones are incomparably sweet 
beyond those of any other ; they may be swelled and 
softened at pleasure, by stronger or weaker pressures 
of the finger, and continued to any length ; and the in- 
strument being once well tuned, never wants tuning 
again;" and he adds : "In honor of your musical lan- 
guage, I have borrowed from it the name of this instru- 
ment, calling it the Armonica.''^ 

Among the latest public testimonies received by Frank- 
lin, during his present sojourn in England, of the high 
estimation in which he was held, was the degree of doctor 



c{68 LIFE OP IJENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

of laws conferred upon him, in April, 1762, by the uni- 
versity of Oxford. His son, also, received at the same 
time the degree of master of arts ; and was, moreover, 
just before his father sailed for America, appointed, by 
the king in council, governor of New Jersey. This 
appointment was procured through the influence of the 
earl of Bute, who was then the favorite minister of the 
young king George III., and who was moved on the oc- 
casion, it is supposed, by his physician. Sir John Pringle, 
one of the elder Franklin's friends and correspondents. 
From a letter to the governor of Pennsylvania, written 
a few months after, by Thomas Penn, it appears that the 
latter cherished some expectation that this appointment 
of the younger Franklin would moderate, if not remov-e, 
his father's opposition to the Proprietary policy in Penn- 
sylvania ; for in that letter he says : " I am told you will 
find Mr. Franklin more tractable ; and I believe we shall, 
in matters of prerogative, as his son must obey instruc- 
tions, and what he is ordered to do, [in Jersey,] thefatJier 
can not well oppose in Pennsylvania." It seems to have 
been difficult for this Proprietary to comprehend the 
character of a man whose j^ublic conduct was guided 
solely by his sense of justice and his convictions of duty. 
At all events, Franklin adhered to his principles as 
steadfastly as ever, and continued to be the trusted 
champion of the rights of the people of Pennsylvania, 
and the object of the bitterest hostility of the Proprietary 
and his unscrupulous partisans. 

Before leaving England, Franklin wrote his farewell 
to Mr. Hume, Lord Kames, and other eminent friends 
in Scotland. In his letter to the former, written on the 
19th of May, he returns the compliment respecting wis- 
dom and gold, by referring to the unparalleled plenty 
of gold and silver in Jerusalem, in the time of Solomon, 
as a type of the abundance of wisdom in Britain ; and 



FAREWELLS VOYAGE HOME. 369 

closes with the expression of his regret, to use his own 
words, "at leaving a country in which he had received so 
much friendship, and friends whose conversation had 
been so agreeable and so improving to him." In his let- 
ter to Lord Kames, written at Portsmouth, on the 17th 
of August, he says : " I am now waiting here only for a 
wind to waft me to America ; but I can not leave this 
hap]3y island and my friends in it, without extreme re- 
gret, though I am going to a country and a people that 
I love. I am going from the old world to the new ; and 
I fancy I feel like those who are leaving this world for 
the next — giief at the parting, fear for the passage, hope 
of the future. These different passions all affect the 
mind at once, and they have tendered me down exceed- 
ingly." After referring, in terms of strong commenda- 
tion, to the celebrated work of Lord Kames, then just 
published, entitled 'Elements of Criticism, of which the 
author had sent him a copy, he closes as follows : 
** Wherever I am I shall esteem the friendship you honor 
me with, as one of the felicities of my life ; I shall 
endeavor to cultivate it by a more punctual correspond- 
ence ; and I hope frequently to hear of your welfare 
and prosperity." Not many days after the date of this 
letter, and before the end of August, Franklin sailed for 
America, in company with ten merchant-ships under 
convoy of a man-of-war. This fleet took the southern 
track, and touched at the island of Madeira. In a letter 
to Lord Kames, written after returning to England on 
his second mission, he gives a brief account of this pas- 
sage, in the following words : — 

** We had a pleasant passage to Madeira, where we 
were kindly received and entertained ; our nation being 
then in high honor with the Portuguese, on account of 
the protection we were then affording them against 
France and Spain. It is a fertile island, and the differ- 



370 LIFE OF RENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ent lieigbts and situaCrons among its mountains, afford 
such temperatures of air, that all the fruits of northern 
and southern countries are produced there j wheat, 
apples, grapes, peaches, oranges, lemons, plantains, ba- 
nanas, and so forth. Here we furnished ourselves with 
fresh provisions of all kinds ; and after a few days pro- 
ceeded on our voyage, running southward until we got 
into the trade-winds, and then with them westward till we 
drew near the coast of America. The weather was so 
favorable, that there were few days in which we could not 
visit from ship to ship, dining with each other, and on 
board of the man-of-war ; which made the time pass 
much more agreeably than when one goes in a single 
ship ; for this was like travelling in a moving village, 
with all one's neighbors in company." 

He reached home on the 1st of November, 1762, after 
an absence from Philadelphia of a little less than six 
years. He found his wife and daughter in good health ; 
" the latter," says he " grown quite a woman, with many 
amiable accomplishments acquired in my absence ; and 
my friends as hearty and affectionate as ever, with whom 
my house was filled for many days, to congratulate me 
on my return." 

His son, who remained behind him in England to con- 
summate, with his father's consent, and approbation," 
his marriage with ^' a very agreeable West India lady, 
with whom he was very happy," arrived at Philadelphia 
with his wife, in the following February ; and after . a 
few days delay at home, he went, accompanied by his 
father, to take possession of his office as governor of 
New Jersey. '• He met," says Franklin, *' with the 
kindest reception from people of all ranks, and has lived 
with them ever since, in the greatest harmony." 



SERVICES ACKNOWLEDGED. 371 



CHAPTER XXIV, 

SERVICES ACKNOWLEDGED JOURNEY NORTH AND EAST 

MILITIA BILL CONESTOGO INDIANS IMBECILITY 

OF GOVERNOR PENN FRANKLIN UPHOLDS THE PUBLIC 

AUTHORITY CONFUTES HIS ENEMIES HIS SECOND 

MISSION TO ENGLAND ORIGIN OF THE STAMP-ACT 

DEAN TUCKER RECEPTION OF STAMP-ACT IN AMERICA 

EXAMINATION BEFORE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 

STAMP-ACT REPEALED VALUE OF HIS SERVICES OLD 

SCOTTISH TUNES. 

Franklin, on his return to Philadelphia, was received, 
as already intimated, with the strongest demonstration 
of respect and affection, by his political as well as per- 
sonal friends. During his absence he had been, every 
year elected as one of the representatives of the city to 
the Provincial Assembly ; and as that body was in ses- 
sion when he returned, he soon took his seat as a mem- 
ber. On his appearance in his place, the house pro- 
ceeded without delay to the consideration of his agency; 
and a committee having been raised to examine his ac- 
counts, unanimously reported, on the 19th of February, 
1763, that they had found them to be just. A resolu- 
tion was thereupon unanimously passed, fixing the period 
of his agency at six years, and granting him five hun- 
dred pounds sterling a year, and the thanks of the 
house, to be pronounced by the speaker, " to Benjamin 
Franklin, for his many services, not only to the province 
of Pennsylvania, but to America in general, during his 



372 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

late agency at the (^rt of Great Britain." These 
thanks were delivered by the Speaker, Mr. Norris, on 
the 31st of March; to which says the journal "Mr. 
Franklin, respectfully addressing himself to the Speaker, 
made answer, that he was thankful to the house for the 
very handsome and generous allowance they had been 
pleased to make him for his services ; but that the appro- 
bation of this house was, in his estimation, far above 
every other kind of recompense." 

In the course of the same spring, Franklin set out on 
a tour through all the colonies north of Pennsylvania, 
to examine and regulate the postoffices. In that jour- 
ney he spent, as he relates in one of his letters, the sum- 
mer and much of the autumn, travelled about sixteen 
hundred miles, and did not return to Philadelphia till 
the beginning of November. He took his daughter 
with him; and so different were the habits of that time, 
from those of the present age of steamboats and rail- 
roads, that the young lady, as Franklin writes to a 
friend, " kept to her saddle the greatest part of the jour- 
ney, and was well pleased v/ith her tour." 

While in Boston, Franklin met with a fall which dis- 
located his shoulder ; and though the joint was speedily 
and properly adjusted again, yet it gave him considera- 
ble pain, and so much disabled him from driving, or 
even bearing the motion of his carriage, on the' rough 
roads of that day, that he was obliged to rest awhile 
from travelling. It appears from a letter to his sister, 
Mrs. Mecom, written after his return home, and it may 
be useful to mention the fact, that he used the cold bath 
frequently and with benefit, not only to his weakened 
limb, but as a general tonic. The same letter has a pas- 
sage, which we copy for the sake of the shrewd, and yet 
good-humored notice it takes, of the annoyance frequently 
given by a well-meant, but a too busy and officious hos- 



CONDITION OF THE PROVINCE. 373 

pitality. After referring to some little remaining weak- 
ness in his shoulder, he adds; **I am otherwise very- 
happy in being at home, where I am allowed to know 
when I have eat enough, and drank enough, am warm 
enough, and sit in a place that I like, and nobody knows 
how I feel better than I do myself." 

Notwithstanding the decision, which Franklin had 
obtained from the Privy Council, that the estates of the 
Proprietaries were subject to taxation in the same man- 
ner as all other property in the province, yet that decis- 
ion did not restore harmony to tlie provincial govern- 
ment. The Proprietaries claimed other exclusive priv- 
ileges and prerogatives, and their defeat on the great 
point of equal taxation, served only to exasperate them? 
and their partisans the more, particularly against Frank- 
lin, through whose exertions they had been discomfited; 
and as he continued to exert his great abilities in behalf 
of impartial legislation, and the rights of the people, 
with unswerving constancy as well as marked success, he 
became, more conspicuously than ever, the object of an 
enmity, which was envenomed by envy, and was mani- 
fested by the most unscrupulous misrepresentations of 
his conduct, and the most calumnious attacks upon his 
character. He met this hostility, however, wath steady 
self-possession and firmness. He confuted the calumnies 
of his enemies, and went on discharging his public du- 
ties, maintaining the cause of law and order, and at the 
same time defending popular rights, against proprietary 
usurpation, with unabated zeal. And, indeed, to such a 
condition had the j)rovincial administration now become 
reduced, through the imbecility and mismanagement of 
the present governor, (John Penn, nephew of Thomas, the 
principal Proprietary,) and the recklessness of the lead- 
ing demagogues of his party, that insurrection, riot, mur- 
der, and confusion, prevailed so widely in the province, 
32 



374 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

and the civil authorit^iad become so nearly powerless, 
that the governor was placed under the humiliating 
necessity of looking to Franklin for support. A brief 
statement of facts will illustrate what has just been said. 

Though the war between Great Britain and France, 
had been terminated by the treaty of Paris, in February, 
1763, yet the Indian tribes, in the French interest, still 
continued hostile, and making frequent bloody inroads 
upon the back settlements, spread terror throughout the 
western frontiers, which had been left almost totally de- 
fenceless, upon the withdrawal of the regular forces. 
The Pennsylvania frontier was particularly exposed to 
this savage warfare ; and to furnish the protection due 
to the inhabitants in that quarter, money was granted by 
the Assembly, to raise and pay troops, and furnish them 
with all necessary supplies ; and Franklin was placed in 
the board of commissioners, appointed to direct and su- 
perintend the expenditure of this money. 

As Pennsylvania had no permanently-SnroUed and 
organized militia, it became necessary to raise a mili- 
tary force for every emergency as it arose ; and to do so, 
on this occasion, the Assembly promptly passed a bill 
for the purpose. That bill gave to each company, to be 
recruited under it, the right to nominate nine persons, or 
three for each of the offices of captain, lieutenant, and 
ensign, from which number, the governor was to select 
the individuals he might j^refer, and commission them. 
The companies of a regiment being thus organized, their 
officers were to meet, and nominate three persons for 
each of the regimental officers, and the governor was to 
make his own selection, and bestow his commissions, as 
in the other case. The bill also provided moderate fines 
for neglect of duty, and what was deemed far more im- 
portant than all the rest, enacted that all offences com- 
mitted in this temporary body of troops, should be tried 



MILITIA BILL. 375 

according to the usual course of law, by a civil court 
and jury. 

To this bill the governor refused his assent, unless the 
Assembly v^^ould amend it, by giving to him alone the 
unrestricted authority to designate, as well as commis- 
sion every one of the officers — by increasing the fines 
threefold, and in some instances fivefold — and by substi- 
tuting for civil courts and juries, courts-martial, to be 
called and constituted by himself alone, for the trial of 
any and every offence, great and small, with power not 
only to impose fines, but to inflict sentence of death. 
These amendments gave such unlimited power to the 
governor, and were so abhorrent to the principles and 
feelings of the Assembly, especially as applicable to the 
kind of troops to be raised, that ** the house," says 
Franklin, " could by no means consent to give up the 
liberty, estates, and lives of their constituents, to the 
absolute power of a proprietary governor; and so the 
bill failed." 

Thus, through the perverse temper, and inordinate 
demands of the governor, the Assembly was not permit- 
ted to employ the strength and means of the province 
for .its defence against dangers from without ; while 
within, through the prevalence of a partisan spirit in a 
dependent and unfaithful judiciary and magistracy, the 
laws had become so powerless, that many good citizens, 
whose lives had been threatened, for their endeavors to 
procure the regular and honest administration of justice, 
fled the province. 

One of the most shocking proofs of this state of law- 
less anarchy, is presented in a narrative, drawn up by 
Franklin, in 1764, of the fate of a small remnant of In- 
dians, called the Conestogos, from the name of their 
residence in the county of Lancaster. Their tribe had 
once belonged to the famous confederacy of The Six 



376 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Nations, but their fi^^dship for the white man, had 
severed the connection. In the days of their prosperity, 
" on the first arrival of the Enghsh in Pennsylvania," 
says Franklin, '* messengers from this tribe, came to 
welcome them, with presents of venison, corn, and 
skins ;" and it was with this tribe, as being the nearest 
to the new-comers, that William Penn made his first 
treaty — a treaty which had often been renewed and 
never violated, till the time in question. As their lands 
and numbers diminished, and the white settlers pressed 
more closely and densely around them, a tract called the 
manor of Conestogo, was set apart for their exclusive 
occupation, and there they had dwelt unmolested, deri- 
ving a comfortable subsistence from their rude tillage, 
and their simple handicraft, in peace and friendship with 
their white neighbors, till near the close of 1763, when 
their number had dwindled to twenty persons, consist- 
ing of seven men, five women, and eight children of 
both sexes. 

Such was the condition of these harmless people, when 
on the morning of the 14th of December, 1763, six of 
them, three men, two women, and a boy, (the rest of 
them being out among the neighboring white families, 
selling their baskets and other wares,) were murdered in 
cold blood, and their huts burnt, by a party of fifty-sev- 
en white men from the frontiers. This outrage caused 
great excitement among the white people of the vicin- 
ity ; and the magistrates of Lancaster had the surviving 
Indians brought into that town and lodged in the work- 
house as a place of security. Governor Penn, also, 
issued a proclamation calling on all magistrates, sheriffs, 
and other ofiicers both civil and military, and all good 
subjects, to aid with their best diligence in discovering, 
and bringing the murderers to justice. 

The above proclamation was issued on the 22d of 



MASSACRE OF THE CONESTOGOS. 377 

December, but it had scarcely got into circulation, when, 
on the 27th of the same month, fifty of the bloodthirsty 
band against whom it was levelled had the audacity to 
appear in Lancaster, mounted and armed as before; and 
going to the workhouse, broke in and murdered the re- 
maining Indians while on their knees protesting their 
friendship for the whites and begging for mercy. This 
second act of diabolical ferocity was perpetrated in open 
day, in the face of the community, in defiance and con- 
tempt of the law and its ministers, and the murderers 
mounted and rode off unmolested. 

Another proclamation was put forth by the governor, 
offering a reward of two hundred pounds for the appre- 
hension and conviction of any three of the ringleaders 
of the band, and a pardon to any accomplice, not actually 
guilty of murder, who would discover any one of the 
principals and assist in convicting him. 

So weak, however, was the government, so prostrate 
was the civil authority, and so generally was society dis- 
ordered, that the proclamations effected nothing. The 
threats of the murderers against all who should openly 
condemn their acts, spread such terror through a large 
section of the province, that no one ventured to disclose 
by speech or writing what he knew. And this was not 
all. A company of one hundred and forty Indians of 
another tribe having been converted to Christianity by 
the Moravians, had detached themselves ft-om their tribe, 
which was then hostile to the whites, and were living 
quietly within the province. From the same quarter to 
which the murderers of the Conestogos belonged, came 
forth threats against the lives of these converts ; and so 
well founded was the alarm thus excited, that, after sev- 
eral efforts to place them out of danger in other places, 
the whole company was finally taken to Philadelphia to 

insure their safety. 
32* 



378 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

In such a state of things it was that FrankHn issued 
the narrative already mentioned, in which he placed the 
facts in so clear a light, denounced, in such bold and in- 
dignant language, the outrages committed and threatened, 
as a reproach and disgrace to the public authorities and 
the whole province, that the humanity, self-respect, pub- 
lic spirit, and honor of the people and the government 
to which he appealed, were at length roused to some 
sense of duty, and all seemed disposed, for a time at least, 
in Philadelphia and the more populous districts in its 
neighborhood, to make an effort to uphold the laws and 
restore order and security. 

Still, such was the incompetency of the governor, that 
his own protection and that of the Indian converts was 
devolved in fact on Franklin ; for when a large body of 
the armed insurgents, to quote his language, "marched 
toward the capital, in defiance of the government, with 
an avowed resolution to put to death the one hundred 
and forty Indian converts then under its protection," the 
governor appealed to him for assistance. Franklin prompt- 
ly answered this appeal, and as there was no militia in 
the province, he adopted his former method of proceed- 
ing, when public danger was impending, and raised and 
organized a volunteer corps of a thousand men for the 
defence of the government. Indeed, Governor Penn 
found it expedient to make his headquarters at Frank- 
lin's house, and to act wholly by his advice. 

When the insurgents found that preparation was thus 
made to meet force with force, they began to falter. Ta- 
king advantage of their hesitation, Franklin with three 
other persons went, at the request of the governor and 
council, to confer with tliem ; and the result was, that 
they were induced to abandon their enterprise and re- 
turn home. 

But, notwithstanding services like these, the governor, 



PERVERSITY OF THE GOVERNOR. 379 

as soon as the immediate danger was over, returned to 
his perverse policy and his old party connections. The 
expenses, consequent upon these proceedings and the 
defence of the back settlements against the inroads of 
the banded tribes of hostile Indians, w^ere heavy, and to 
meet them the Assembly passed a bill to raise fifty thou- 
sand pounds, in the usual way, by issuing bills of credit, 
to be redeemed by specific revenues raised by certain 
excises and a land-tax. This latter tax was made by 
Governor Penn the occasion of another quarrel with the 
Assembly. The decision of the privy council, which had 
declared the proprietary estates subject to taxation like 
all other property in the province, was accompanied, as 
we have seen, by some other directions designed to give 
greater precision to the acts of the Assembly, and among 
them was one that the uncultivated but actually located 
lands of the Proprietaries should " not be assessed higher 
than the lowest rate at which any located uncultivated 
lands belonging to the inhabitants should be assessed." 
The Assembly interpreted this as a direction that the 
proprietary lands of the class in question should be as- 
sessed at the same rates with similar lands of other peo- 
ple, of like quality and value ; while the governor insist- 
ed that, under it, the very best of the proprietary lands 
referred to could be assessed no higher than the lowest 
assessment of the poorest lands of the same class belong- 
ing to others. 

The Assembly urged that the decision of the council was 
expressly intended to establish equal taxation of all lands 
of equal value ; that the governor's interpretation of the 
clause in question was a forced and unjust one, and was, 
in fact, in violation of the essential point of the decision, 
inasmuch as it was palpably repugnant to the principle of 
equality. But the governor persisted ; and after a good 
deal of controversy, the Assembly, moved by the pres- 



380 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

sure of the public exi^ncy and by a humane feeling for 
the sufferings of the people on the frontier, gave way and 
passed the act as required by the governor. 

This affair, however, only served to strengthen the 
majority of the Assembly and of their constituents in the 
conviction that no just and fair legislation was to be ex- 
pected, as long as the government remained in the hands 
of the Proprietaries. They therefore adopted, just at 
the close of the session, a series of resolutions, setting 
forth the evils inflicted on the people of the province by 
the proprietary government, and declaring that no just 
and useful administration of public affairs could be ex- 
pected, till their political power was taken from them and 
transferred directly to the king. Having passed these 
resolutions, the Assembly adjourned. 

During the winter and spring, Franklin published an 
able exposition of the defects of the existing form of gov- 
ernment, in which he fortified his position by reference to 
the other proprietary governments in America ; showing 
that, in every case, the continual controversies they had 
generated and the evils which had uniformly flowed from 
them, had " found no relief but in finally recurring to the 
immediate government of the crown ;" so that those of 
Maryland and Pennsylvania were the only two of the 
kind remaining. This pamphlet was entitled *' Cool 
Thoughts on the Present Situation of Public Affairs'^ — 
and it made a strong impression, preparatory, as it was 
intended to be, to the meeting of the Assembly in May, 
1764. 

The meeting in May took place on the 14th of the 
month ; and on the 26th, Mr. Norris, who had been speak- 
er of the Assembly for a long series of years, resigned his 
station, on account of the feeble state of his health, and 
Franklin was chosen in his place. He had, however, 
previously drawn and introduced a petition to the king, 



PETITION TO THE KING. 381 

asking, in the name of " the representatives of the free- 
men of the province of Pennsylvania in General Assem- 
bly met," for the contemplated change in the form of 
government; and the petition, backed as it was by many 
resolutions to the same effect, sent up to the house from 
meetings of the people in all quarters of the province, 
became at once the leading subject of the session. Af- 
ter a long and w^arm debate, in the course of which the 
champions of the proprietary party assailed Franklin 
with the bitterest invective, the petition was carried by a 
large majority. 

The document was brief and directly to the point. It 
set forth that controversies were perpetually arising be- 
tween the proprietary governors and the Assembly, as 
the direct consequence of the clashing between the pri- 
vate interests of the Proprietaries and their duties as the 
trustees of political power ; that these controversies, as 
long experience had shown, were continually impeding 
the public service; that the government had become so 
factious and weak that it was unable to maintain its au- 
thority, or preserve the internal peace of the province, 
which was thus filled with riot and insurrection from 
armed mobs committing their outrages with impunity; 
and that there was no prospect of relief from these evils 
but from the king's taking the government of the prov- 
ince into his own hands, making an equitable compensa- 
tion to the Proprietaries, pursuant to the contract of the 
original grantee. 

The contract referred to in the petition was made by 
William Penn himself, who, long before his death, hav- 
ing become entirely convinced that the permanent wel- 
fare of his province required him to divest himself and 
his successors of all the political powers conferred by 
the original grant from the king, had not only determined 
to carry that contract into effect, but had actually re- 



382 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ceived part of the con^eration to which it entitled him, 
and had provided, in his last will and testament, for the 
complete fulfilment of it by his heirs, in case he should die 
(as he did) before its consummation. The petition, there- 
fore, was not only founded in political justice, but it did not 
infringe in any respect on the private rights of the Pro- 
prietaries, who were themselves, in truth, the only party 
against whom could be fairly brought the charge of vio- 
lated faith, in reference to the obligations imposed either 
by the provincial constitution, or by the personal and 
transmitted covenants of its founder. 

Of the members of the Assembly who opposed the pe- 
tition and defended the Proprietaries, the most eminent 
was John Dickinson, who in later years acquired a higher 
reputation in a better cause, both as a member of the first 
Continental Congress and as the author of the celebrated 
'' Farmer^ s Letters.''^ Shortly after the termination of 
the debate, Mr. Dickinson's speech was published with 
an elaborate prefatory discourse on the same side of the 
question. The ablest debater on the other side was Jo- 
soph Galloway, an eminent lawyer, who, in his reply to 
tlie speech of Mr. Dickinson, reviewed at much length 
and with distinguished ability the defects of the proprie- 
tary government, the vices of its administration, and the 
unhappy condition to which it had reduced the province. 
On the appearance of Mr. Dickinson's speech with its 
accompanient, Franklin, who, with all his ability as a 
writer, never figured as a debater, published Mr. Gallo- 
way's speech, with a preface from his own pen, remark- 
ing, in his opening paragraph, that he did so, not because 
Mr. Dickinson's speech appeared with a preface, but be- 
cause that preface contained aspersions upon former As- 
semblies, and misrepresentations of their proceedings, 
demanding animadversion and correction. And truly, 
these were vigorously administered. He refuted the 



PARTY CONTEST. 383 

Statements of the Proprietaries and their partisans, ex- 
posed the unworthy selfishness and injustice of their pol- 
icy, their contradictory pretensions, the factious and merce- 
nary character of their administration, and vindicated the 
Assemblies assailed, with proofs drawn from public doc- 
uments and notorious facts presented by the condition 
of the province. To borrow the appropriate words of 
the recent able editor of his works, '* For sarcastic humor, 
point, and strength of argument, this preface is one of the 
best of his performances." 

The legal term of the Assembly which voted the peti- 
tion ended in September; and at the session which closed 
with its dissolution, information was received that the 
British cabinet entertained the design of raising a reve- 
nue in the colonies by a tax on stamps. This intelli- 
gence instantly produced great excitement in Pennsyl- 
vania, as in the other colonies, and Franklin's last signa- 
ture as speaker was put to a resolution of the house, 
instructing their agent in London, Richard Jackson, to 
remonstrate against the contemplated tax as a violation 
of the rights of the colonies. 

At the election which shortly followed, Franklin, who 
had been chosen, whether absent or at home, one of the 
representatives of the city of Philadelphia for fourteen 
successive years, was defeated by the unexampled exer- 
tions and corrupt means employed by the Proprietary 
party. The majority against him, however, was only twen- 
ty-five votes in four thousand. Even that was but a bar- 
ren victory ; for when the new Assembly met in October, 
it showed a decisive majority in favor of the petition for 
a change of government ; and resolving to press the meas- 
ure with their utmost energy, they proceeded on the 26th 
of the month just named to appoint Franklin their agent, 
with instructions to depart for England with all conve- 
nient despatch, to lay the petition before the king in 



384 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

council, and use his ^st efforts to obtain the change 
prayed for. 

The Proprietary minority in the house were so chafed 
by this result, that they threw off the restraints, not merely 
of ordinary decorum, but of common discretion ;. and in 
a paper, which they styled ^' A Protest against the Ap- 
pointment of Mr. Franklin as Agent for the Province of 
Pennsyhmma^^^ they assailed both the agent and the ma- 
jority of the Assembly with such extravagant abuse 
grounded on such gross misrepresentation of facts, that 
it served, naturally and justly, to weaken their own 
cause, while it strengthened that of the people, and aug- 
mented the influence of their ablest and most distin- 
guished leader. This effect was not a little enhanced by 
the reply of that leader, issued just as he was on the 
point of sailing for England, under the title of ^^ Remarks 
on a Late Protest, (^c." No reply, in the way of either 
defence or retort, was ever more triumphant than this. 
He took a rapid review of the charges put forth in the 
protest, of his own public acts, of the course of the Pro- 
prietaries and their partisans, of the inconsistency of their 
conduct, the hypocrisy of their professions, and sustained 
himself not only by the public records and journals of 
the Assembly, but, on several points in reference to 
which the attack Ifati- manifested peculiar malignity, by 
written testimony on file from his assailants themselves ; 
and all this with a clearness of exposition, a complete- 
ness of proof, a directness and pertinency in the applica- 
tion of facts, and a pungency of retort, in all respects as 
conclusive in point of argument, as the style and manner 
of the whole were admirably adapted to the occasion. 
Franklin closes this most successful vindication of him- 
self and his friends in the Assembly in the following im- 
pressive words : " I am now to take leave (perhaps a 
last leave) of the country I love, and in which I have 



SECOND MISSION. 385 

spent the greatest part of ray life. Esto perpetua. I 
"wish every kind of prosperity to my friends : and I for- 
give my enemies." 

The times were now beginning to deepen in gloom. 
The course pursued by the Proprietaries and their lead- 
ing partisans had reduced Pennsylvania to a disturbed, 
distempered, and unhappy condition ; and the usurping 
and tyrannical policy of the British government began 
to lower across the Atlantic and menace the dearest 
rights and privileges of the American colonies. To 
show something of the aspects of the political horizon-^ 
something of the anxiety with which thoughtful and ear- 
nest men were beginning to ruminate upon the future, 
as well as something of the estimation in which Frank- 
lin's abilities, weight of character, and services, were 
held by sober-minded patriots — the following testimony 
from a competent and impartial witness, given at a later 
day, will be read with interest : " This second embassy 
of Franklin," said Dr. Smith, the head of the college at 
Philadelphia, " appears to have been a measure preor- 
dained by the counsels of Heaven ; and it will be for ever 
remembered to thehonor of Pennsylvania, that the agent 
selected to assert and defend the rights of a single prov- 
ince, at the court of Great Britain, became the bold as- 
sertor of the rights of America in general ; and, behold- 
ing the fetters that were forging for her, conceived the 
magnanimous thought of rending them asunder before 
they could be riveted." 

The Assembly, when they appointed their agent, hav- 
ing no money at their disposal, voted that they would 
provide for the expenses of the mission in their next 
public-money bill. On the faith of that vote, the sum 
immediately needed was supplied by the public-spirited 
merchants of Philadelphia ; and on the 7th of November, 
Franklin left home, escorted by a cavalcade of three hun- 
33 



386 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

dred of his townsmen and friends, for Chester, sixteen 
miles below, where he embarked. The next day the 
ship proceeded to Newcastle to take in some live stock 
for the passage, which done, she dropped down as far as 
Reedy island ; and the last letter written by Franklin 
before leaving the shores of his native land, was dated at 
"Reedy island, 7 at night, 8th November, 1764." It 
was addressed to his daughter, and is full of tenderness 
and wise counsel. His sensibility had been deeply moved 
by the warm rally of his friends about him, after the 
virulence exhibited by his political enemies, and he says 
to her : *' The affectionate leave taken of me by so many 
friends, at Chester, was very endeaiing. God bless them 
and all Pennsylvania." Though *' the natural prudence 
and goodness of heart God had blessed her with," as he 
affectionately says to her, " make it less necessary to be 
particular in giving you advice," yet, says he, " the more 
attentively dutiful and tender you are toward your good 
mother, the more will you recommend yourself to mc;" 
adding — **but why should I mention me, when you have 
so much higher a promise, in the commandments, that 
such conduct will recommend you to the favor of God 1" 
Adverting to his political enemies, he exhorts her to pe- 
culiar circumspection, that she might give them no pre- 
text for their watchful malevolence ** to magnify her 
slightest indiscretions into crimes," in order to wound 
Imn through her. He enjoins it upon her to be constant 
in her attendance upon Divine worship, less for the sake 
of the preacher, or the sermon, than for the devotional 
exercises, the more important part of the service, be- 
cause more efficacious in fostering piety and *' amending 
the heart, than sermons" usually are; though he would 
not have her undervalue sermons even from unacceptable 
preachers, for " the discourse is often better than the man, 
as sweet and clear waters come through very dirty earth." 



FAREWELL AND ARRIVAL. 387 

He desires her also " to acquire those useful accomplish- 
ments, arithmetic and book-keeping;" and in closing, he 
implores for her " the blessing of God, worth thousands 
of his, though his would never be wanting." 

On the 9th of December, in the afternoon, the ship in 
which Franklin sailed dropped anchor off Spithead ; and 
the same waters, which he had visited thirty-eight years 
before, as an obscure young journeyman printer trans- 
formed for a short while to a merchant's clerk, he now, for 
the first time since that period, again visited, on a diplo- 
matic mission to the court of a great empire, intrusted 
with the rights and liberties of a rising commonwealth, 
and as a philosopher who had filled all Christendom with 
his fame. In a brief letter to his wife, written before 
landing, to inform her of his safe arrival, he says : " We 
have had terrible weather, and I have often been thank- 
ful that our dear Sally was not with me. Tell our friends 
who dined with us on the turtle, that the kind prayer they 
then put up for thirty days' fair wind to me, was favora- 
bly heard and answered, we being just thirty days from 
land to land." From Portsmouth, where he went ashore, 
Franklin proceeded without delay to London, and on ar- 
riving there he went immediately to his former lodgings 
at Mrs. Stevenson's, No. 7 Craven street. This event 
gave the people of Pennsylvania the liveliest gratifica- 
tion. Cadwallader Evans, in a letter to him, dated at 
Philadelphia, March 15, 1765, says: "A vessel from 
Ireland to New York brought us the most agreeable 
news of your safe arrival in London, which occasioned 
a great and general joy in Pennsylvania among those 
whose esteem an honest man would value most. The 
bells rang on that account till near midnight, and liba- 
tions were poured out for your health, success, and every 
other happiness." 

When, in September, 1764, as we have already seen, 



388 LIFE OF BENJAMIN PRANKr.IN. 

information of the design of the British Parliament to 
raise a revenue in the colonies by laying a tax on stamped 
paper which was to be made necessary to the validity of 
all written contracts, reached the Assembly of Pennsylva- 
nia, that body, Franklin being then its speaker, promptly 
sent instructions to Richard Jackson, their general agent 
in London, to oppose the contemplated measure. When, 
shortly after, Franklin was sent on his present mission, 
besides the special instructions relating to it, he was also 
directed, as were the other colonial agents, to use his best 
efforts to prevent the passage of the stamp-act. 

Of the origin of this famous measure, and of his own 
course in opposing it, Franklin has left a clear and in- 
teresting account in a letter written by him, in 1778, 
while he was residing at Paris as minister of the United 
States to the court of France. The letter was addressed 
to William Alexander, who had sent to Franklin a pam- 
phlet relating to the subject and containing some material 
misstatements. It stated, among other things, that when 
Mr. Grenville, then the British prime minister, conceived 
the design of raising a revenue in the colonies, his first 
plan was to demand of them a specific sum, to be levied 
by them in such manner as they might think fit ; but that 
they refused to grant anything, and that in co7isequence oi 
that refusal, he brought forward the scamp-act. Frank- 
lin avers that " no one of these particulars was true," 
and then proceeds to state the actual course of the trans- 
action. The substance of his statement is as follows : — 

About the beginning of 1764, Mr. Grenville had a 
meeting of the colonial agents, then in London, at which 
he informed them of his design to introduce a bill at the 
next session of Parliament, to draw a revenue from the 
colonies by a tax on stamps ; that he gave them this no- 
tice, to be communicated to their constitutents in season 
for them to consider the subject, and that if they could 



HISTORY OP THE STAMP-ACT. 389 

suggest any other tax, which, being equally productive, 
would be more acceptable to them, they might let him 
know it. The agents accordingly wrote to their respec- 
tive Assemblies, and their letters were received, as here- 
tofore stated, early in the succeeding autumn. 

The Assembly of Pennsylvania objected to the contem- 
plated act on the ground that it would be, not only contrary 
to all recognised and long-established usage, but a direct 
encroachment on the rights and privileges of the colonies 
as vested in them by their charters. The constitutional 
and established mode of raising supplies in the colonies 
for the king's service, was by requisition from the king in 
council, whenever his majesty, as advised by his council, 
deemed a rightful occasion had occurred for making it; 
such requisition to be communicated by the minister 
having charge of colonial affairs, through the several co- 
lonial governoi's, to the respective Assemblies of the col- 
onies, with explanations of the nature of the occasion, for 
their information and satisfaction, and with an expression 
of his majesty's regard and his reliance on their loyalty 
and public spirit for granting such sums as would com- 
port with their ability, the mode of raising them being 
left to their discretion. 

The colonies, it was urged, had always responded lib- 
erally to such requisitions — so liberally, indeed, during 
the then recent war, as greatly to exceed their just pro- 
portion ; and though Parliament, pursuant to the king's 
recommendation, had reimbursed to them collectively 
two hundred thousand pounds a year, for five successive 
years, yet even that sum, a million in all, fell much short 
of a full indemnification. The meditated tax, therefore, 
would be not less ungracious than unjust. Besides, un- 
der their charters, their political connection was solely 
with the king : he alone was their sovereign, and his 
financial ministers had, as such, nothing to do with them ; 
33* 



390 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Mr. Grenville had no authority to make requisitions upon 
them through their agents, nor had these any authority 
to stipulate anything concerning taxes by act of Parlia- 
ment, inasmuch as the Parliament itself had no right to 
tax them at all, so long as they were not represented in 
that body. 

Such was the position taken, in common with the other 
colonial Assemblies, by the Assembly of Pennsylvania ; 
and in conformity therewith, that body, in the session of 
September, 1763, already referred to, passed a resolu- 
tion purporting that, as they always had considered it 
their duty, so they should continue to consider it, to grant 
aids to the king, according to their ability, whenever 
such aids were applied for " in the usual constitutional 
manner." 

When Franklin shortly after went to England, he 
took with him an authenticated copy of that resolution, 
and communicated it to Mr. Grenville before that minis- 
ter introduced his bill for taxing stamps. Similar reso- 
lutions from other colonies were also laid before him ; 
and if he had been wise enough to drop that measure 
and apply to the privy council for the usual requisition, 
"he would," says Franklin, " I am sure, have obtained 
more money from the colonies, by their voluntary grants, 
than he himself expected from his stamps. But he chose 
compulsion rather than ■persuasion, and would not receive 
from their good will what he thought he could obtain 
without it." 

Thus Franklin showed that the course, which the 
pamphlet blamed the colonies for not taking, was the 
very course they actually took ; and that the minister per- 
sisted in forcing his bill through Parliament, not only 
against the remonstrances and protests of the colonies, 
but in contempt of their unvaried practice and recognised 
duty of granting supplies for the king's service, in all 



STAMP-ACT. 391 

public emergencies, when called for in a manner consist- 
ent with the rights and liberties secured to them alike by 
their charters and by the British constitution. In this 
way, the obstinacy of one man, of an impracticable and 
arbitrary temper, by adhering to an extravagant claim of 
power not founded in right and never advanced before, 
became the real moving cause of that controversy, which, 
though it took various phases in its progress, never ceased 
until it resulted in sundering from the mother-country 
the noblest portion of her empire. The inherent incon-; 
sistency of such a claim was gross as its injustice. Tt was 
a fundamental principle of the British constitution that its 
subjects could not be rightfully taxed, or have a farthing of 
their property taken from them in any other way, without 
their own consent expressed directly by themselves or 
their legal representatives. This principle was recog- 
nised by Mr. Grenville as much as by his opponents : 
and, although his very proposal of a tax necessarily 
implied that the people to be taxed were subjects, yet 
he persisted in claiming for Parliament the right to tax 
hundreds of thousands of subjects, in all cases what- 
soever, -not only without their consent in any form, but 
against their universal remonstrance. 

The earnestness of Franklin's opposition, not merely 
to the stamp-act, but to the whole claim of power on 
which it rested, was vividly expressed by him in a letter 
of July 11, 1765, to Charles Thompson of Philadelphia, 
so well known in after-years as the secretary of the Con- 
tinental Congress. In quoting from that letter, we would 
remind the reader that the " claims of independence" 
mentioned in it, related merely to the counter-claims of 
Parliament I'especting taxation, not to national indepen- 
dence : it was this very stamp-act and the power it as- 
serted that first led to the agitation of the independence 
of '76 ; and the last remark quoted below shows that the 



392 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

coming of that great event was already betokened to the 
forecasting mind of him who made it : '* Depend upon it, 
my good neighbor," said Franklin, ** I took every step 
in my power to prevent the passing of the stamp-act. 
But the tide was too strong against us. This nation was 
provoked by American claims of independence, and all 
parties joined by resolving in this act to settle the point. 
We might as well have hindered the sun's setting. That 
we could not do. But since it is down, my friend, and 
it may be long before it rises again, let us make as good 
a night of it as we can. We may still light candles. 
Frugality and industry will go a great way toward in- 
demnifying us. Idleness and pride tax with a heavier 
hand than kings and parliaments. If we can get rid of 
the former, we ')7iay easily get rid of the latter T 

Mr. Thompson's reply to the above letter is so interest- 
ing, that we extract a part of it : ** The sun of liberty," 
said he, ** is indeed fast setting, if not already down, in 
these colonies. They are in general alarmed to the last 
degree. They can not bring themselves to believe, nor 
can they see how England with reason or justice expects, 
that they should have encountered the horrors of a wilder- 
ness, borne the attacks of barbarous savages, and, at the 
expense of their blood and treasure, settled this country 
to the great emolument of England, and after all quietly 
submit to be dej^rived of everything an Englishman had 
been taught to hold dear. It is not property only we 
contend for. Our liberty and most essential privileges 
are struck at." 

Notwithstanding Franklin's constant and fearless as- 
sertion, both at home and in England, of the rights of 
the colonies under their charters — though the shrewd 
and accomplished governor Denny had vainly endeavored 
to lure him to the side of the Proprietaries by assurances 
of wealth and preferment — and though the imbecile gov- 



DEAN TUCKER. 393 

ernor John Penn, when his administration was menaced 
with subversion by riot and insurrection incited by his 
own weakness and the misconduct of his magistrates, had 
sought the protection of Franklin and found it — yet the 
emissaries of that same faction had the effrontery to cir- 
culate a story that Franklin was in favor of the stamp- 
act. The charge, however, was so extravagantly false, 
and its motive so palpable, that it recoiled upon its in- 
ventors ; and the zeal and energy of his efforts to con- 
vince the ministry of the evil tendency of the measure, 
and to prevent its passage, were rewarded by a marked 
increase of the public confidence and esteem. 

Of the maligners of Franklin in England on this occa- 
sion, the most prominent was the Rev. Josiah Tucker, 
dean of Gloucester. He was addicted to politics, and 
wrote various pieces, in which he handled the colonial 
claims, as he supposed, very severely. In one of these 
pieces he charged Franklin with having, after the pas- 
sage of the stamp-act, applied to Mr. Grenville for the 
office of distributor of stamps and collector of the stamp- 
duty for Pennsylvania. This charge having been brought 
to Franklin's notice some time after, he had the charity 
to suppose that the dean had been imposed upon by 
others, and wrote to him, in courteous terms, assuring 
him that the allegation was unfounded, and requesting 
him to withdraw it. To this the dean replied by saying 
that on inquiry he had found himself " mistaken in some 
circumstances" of the case, '* though right as to the sub- 
stance." To this insulting answer, Franklin replied that 
** if the substance was riglit, any mistakes in the cir- 
cumstances could give him little concern ;" but " know- 
ing the sitbstance to be wrong," and supposing that the 
dean could have no wish to injure his character, he asked 
him to communicate the particulars of his information, 
as he believed he could, after seeing what they were, 



394 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

satisfy the dean that troy were groundless ; and lie pro- 
posed this course as being " more decent than a public 
altercation, and better suiting the respect due to the char- 
acter" of the dean. 

The justice of this request the reverend gentleman 
could not but admit, and professing his readiness to com- 
ply with it, he tells Franklin that he had long considered 
his advocacy of the cause of the colonies as " exceeding 
the bounds of morality," but that "if it could be jproved 
that he [the dean] had unjustly suspected him," he should 
acknowledge his error with much satisfaction ;" and then, 
after this peculiarly modest introduction, he proceeds to 
give the particulars asked for, by saying that he had been 
*' repeatedly informed" that Franklin had solicited Mr. 
Grenville for the office mentioned, " from which circum- 
stance," he adds, " I myself concluded that you had made 
interest for it on your own account ; whereas, I am now 
informed that there are no positive proofs" to that effect, 
but that " there is evidence still existing" of such an ap- 
plication for a friend ; from which circumstance the dean 
again concludes that " the general merits of the question" 
are not materially varied, inasmuch as any distinction be- 
tween oneself and a friend, in such a case, was above his 
comprehension ; and then, in his gracious condescension, 
the dean closes with a compliment to Franklin's " great 
abilities and happy discoveries." 

The gist of this charge was, as the reader will observe, 
that Franklin, from mercenary motives and in contempt 
of his professed principles, had, of his own volition, ap- 
plied for the office named — had solicited it — made in- 
terest for it ; and that there was proof, which, though it 
failed, in point of mere form, to sustain the charge against 
Franklin by name, did show that an application was made 
by him for the office mentioned in the name of a friend, 
and sustained the inuendo that the form of the pro- 



CALUMNY REFUTED. 395 

ceeding was only a cunning pretext to cover the real 
object. 

The deliberate malice of the reverend calumniator hav- 
ing thus betrayed itself, Franklin w^as too accurate an 
observer of character to expect from him any frank and 
manly confession of the truth. But resolving to leave 
him without excuse for his injustice, he wrote him a full 
and clear statement of the facts, accompanied by a com- 
ment, which, though expressed with the decorum and 
dignity due to himself and his position, exposed the 
sophistry and equivocation of his assailant, and his mean- 
ness as well as effrontery in continuing to insinuate what 
he could no longer affirm, so conclusively that the rev- 
erend Josiah Tucker did not attempt any rejoinder. 

The facts of the case were these : Some days after 
the passage of the stamp-act, Mr. Grenville's secretary, 
Thomas Whately, wrote Franklin word that he wished to 
see him. Calling on him, therefore, the next morning, 
Franklin found several other colonial agents with Mr. 
Whately, who stated that, to give as little offence as pos- 
sible to the colonies, in executing the act, the officers to 
distribute stamps and receive the duty were to be select- 
ed from among their own people, it being deemed but 
fair that the emoluments of this business should go to in- 
dividuals belonging to the communities paying the tax, 
and not to foreigners ; and that the object of calling the 
colonial agents together was, to request them to recom- 
mend competent and responsible persons in their respec- 
tive colonies for the office in question, as great regard 
would be paid to their recommendation. The agents 
took it for granted that the proposal of Mr. Whately was 
seriously and candidly made, and they all made nomina- 
tions. For Pennsylvania, Franklin named John Hughes, 
one of the best men in the province, saying at the same 
time that he did not know that Mr. Hughes would accept 



396 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

the appointment, but ff le should, he would discharge its 
duties faithfully. Not one of the agents dreamed that 
anybody could torture this civil compliance with a re- 
quest from the minister into an application from them 
for office, or, still v/orse, into an approval of the act they 
had been so strenuously resisting. 

These attacks upon him, however, gave little disturb- 
ance to Franklin's equanimity. Conscious of his recti- 
tude, strong in the confidence of his constituents, and 
continually receiving evidence of the esteem and friend- 
ship of a large circle of the most distinguished and virtu- 
ous men of the time, he held on his course, faithful to 
his principles and his duties. He refers to this topic in 
a letter of July, 1765, to his friend Roberts. " Expres- 
sions of steady friendship," says he, ''such as your letter 
contains, though but from one or a few honest and sen- 
sible men, who have long known us, afford a satisfaction 
that far outweighs the clamorous abuse of a thousand 
knaves and fools." The same composure of spirit, uni- 
ted with a steadfast reliance on Providence, is unequiv- 
ocally indicated in a letter to his wife about the same 
time. " It rejoices me to learn," says he, " that you are 
more free than you used to be from the headache and 
the pain in your side. I am likewise in perfect health. 
God is very good to us both. Let us enjoy his favors 
with thankful and cheerful hearts; and, as we can make 
no direct return to him, show our sense of his goodness 
to us by continuing to do good to our fellow-creatures, 
without regarding the returns they make us, whether 
good or bad. For they are all his children, though they 
they may sometimes be our enemies. The friendships 
of this world are uncertain, transitory things ; but his 
favor, if we can secure it, is an inheritance for ever." 

The passage of the stamp-act, as soon as it was known 
in the colonies, produced a ferment among the people 



RECEPTION OF THE STAMP-ACT. 397 

everywhere. The Assemblies adopted resolutions de- 
nouncing it as beyond the constitutional power of Parlia- 
ment, and a violation of the colonial charters ; and in 
conformity with these resolutions, they prepared peti- 
tions to the king for the repeal of the obnoxious meas- 
ure, and sent them to their agents in London to be laid 
before his majesty in council. These proceedings, though 
firm and explicit, were respectful in language and mod- 
erate in tone. They recognised their allegiance to the 
king, their duty to maintain the interests and honor of 
the crown, and bear their proper share of the burdens 
required for the public service, in the manner always 
recognised and pursued, but protested against the au- 
thority of Parliament as a foreign legislature, in which 
they were not represented, and which, therefore, had no 
rightful power to tax them. 

But while the public bodies proceeded with dignified 
moderation, and the documents they put forth, though 
warm with the sense of invaded rights, were distinguished 
not only for ability, but for that decorum of language 
which best becomes a good cause, the people and their 
favorite orators, paying little regard to punctilio, de- 
nounced the stamp-act, the ministry, and the authority 
of Parliament, in the most vehement terms. The stamp- 
distributors were compelled to renounce their appoint- 
ments ; and when the stamp-paper arrived, not a bale 
was allowed to be landed, but, after being kept for some 
time on shipboard, the vessels that brought it took it all 
back to England. 

Such was the reception of the stamp-act, by which Mr. 
George Grenville had so confidently expected to raise 
an annual revenue of a hundred thousand pounds ster- 
ling in the American colonies ; and the exasperation it 
produced is easily accounted for when it is considered 
that, besides the assumption of power from which it pro- 

34 



398 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ceeded, it expressly enacted, (to sum up its provisions in 
the words of Franklin,) that the people of the colonies 
should "have no commerce, make no exchange of prop- 
erty with each other, neither purchase, nor grant lands, 
nor recover debts ; neither marry, nor make wills," un- 
less they paid, in specie too, the duties imposed by the 
act on the paper it made necessary for the various pur- 
poses indicated, embracing all the important transactions 
of life. 

But it was not the stamp-act alone that caused the out- 
burst of indignant feeling and resolute remonstrance 
through the colonies. Not merely the people of Eng- 
land collectively, but their political writers and leading 
public men, had little knowledge of the actual condition 
of the colonies, or of the character of their population ; 
and what is still more remarkable, the very statesmen 
who undertook to think for their colonial fellow-subjects 
and regulate their affairs, were culpably ignorant, not 
only of the internal relations, pursuits, trade, and re- 
sources, of the colonies, but of their history and progress 
— of the difficulties and dangers they had surmounted, in 
preparing their broad territories for the occupancy of a 
great and civilized people — of the vast benefits the moth- 
er-country had already derived from them, and the still 
greater promise of the future — or of the heavy burdens 
they had borne in her wars, not waged for their sake, 
but springing from her entangled connections with the 
nations of Europe ; and yet, notwithstanding all'this, and 
the loyal zeal it implied, those same ministers and their 
partisan writers were perpetually charging the colonies 
with disaffection and ingratitude, because they would not 
tamely submit to new burdens however crushing, and to 
claims of power which, if allowed, would wrest from 
them every right conferred on them by their charters 
and recognised by the British constitution itself. These 



OPPOSING SENTIMENTS. 399 

considerations had long been weighing upon the minds 
of the colonists, awakening their apprehensions, appeal- 
ing to their sense of right, and goading them to resent- 
ment. When the information came, in the latter part of 
1763, that the British ministry intended to propose the 
stamp-act to Parliament, the colonies saw that the time 
was at hand for the resolute assertion of their rights, 
whatever it might cost; and when the stamped paper ar- 
rived, it was but the lighted match applied to elements 
already prepared for explosion. 

The actual tone of feeling and the tendency of public 
sentiment throughout the colonies, in 1765, is well stated 
by Franklin in a letter dated at London, the 6th of Jan- 
uary, 1766, and commenting on a manuscript sent him 
by a friend, from some one whose name is not given, but 
who proposed a closer union of the colonies with the 
mother-country by providing for their representation in 
Parliament on the same footing with their fellow-subjects 
in England. " The time lias hcen,^^ says Franklin, " when 
the colonies would have esteemed it a great advantage to 
send members to Parliament, and would have asked the 
privilege, if they could have had the least hope of obtain- 
ing it. The time is now come, when they are indifferent 
about it, and will not probably ash it, though they might 
accept it if offered ; and the time will come, when they 
will certainly refuse it. This people, however, is too 
proud to bear the thought of admitting the Americans to 
an equitable participation in the government." 

The general tenor of the manuscript led Franklin to 
regard its author as a " sensible and benevolent" man. 
Yet that author spoke of " the very extraordinary efforts" 
by which " Great Britain, in the late war, had saved the 
colonists from destruction," and of " the consequent load 
of debt," as if all this was for the sake of the colonists 
alone, and as if they had done nothing ; and he insisted, 



400 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

therefore, that they "liquid be somehow induced, to con- 
tribute some proportion toward the exigencies of state 
in future ;" thus betraying his ignorance of the long- 
practised method of raising supplies in the colonies for 
" the exigencies of state," by application from the king 
in council, and of the remarkable fact that those colonies 
had contributed to the expenses of that same ** late war" 
so much beyond their "^7rc>/?or^2o;2," that even Parliament 
had voted them a million sterling by way of reimburse- 
ment. This writer, however, was a well-meaning man, 
whose project of union indicated some sense of justice; 
v\^hile, on the part of ministers and placemen generally, 
with ignorance not less gross than his, was associated a 
jealous enmity toward their American fellow-subjects, 
and a notion of parliamentary and ministerial omnipo- 
tence so exalted as scarcely to permit them to recognise 
such things as colonial rights : and the very pretension 
of the colonies that they had any, not subject to their con- 
trol, seems to have excited a kind of resentful impatience 
to manifest their contempt for such claims as soon as 
possible, in every practicable form. 

Though such were the views and feelings which had 
led to the passage of the stamp-act, and though the 
Grenville ministry and their majority in Parliament had 
laid the remonstrances of the colonies against the act, 
with their petitions for its repeal, on the table, not deign- 
ing to consider them, yet the sentiments they contained 
and the commotion in the colonies had made a strong 
impression on the minds of another class of British states- 
men ; and Mr. Grenville and his colleagues having been 
superseded by the marquis of Rockingham at the head 
of a ministry more favorable to the claims of the colonies, 
the question was brought up, at the commencement of 
the year 1766, with a determination on the part of the 
new ministry to propose the repeal of the obnoxious act. 



EXAMINATION BEFORE PARLIAMENT. 401 

With the view of obtaining light on this subject, the 
hous^ of commons resolved itself into a committee of the 
whole, for the purpose of examining the colonial agents 
and others connected with the trade as well as the in- 
ternal affairs of the colonies, respecting their population, 
pursuits, trade, resources, taxes, sentiments regarding 
their connection with the mother-country, and, in short, 
whatever might properly bear on the question, not merely 
of the stamp-act, but of the general policy to be adopted 
toward the colonies. In pursuance of this resolution, 
Franklin, with several others, was summoned before the 
house on the 3d of February, 1766, to undergo the ap- 
pointed examination. This was a marked and memora- 
ble epoch in Franklin's life. On no occasion in his long 
and splendid career, whether as a statesman and politi- 
cal economist, or as a patriot and a man, did he ever ap- 
pear with more shining advantage. Mr. Grenville and 
several of his adherents not less bitter than himself, as 
well as the supporters of the new premier, took part in 
the examination. The imposing character of the scene, 
the important and exciting interests involved, and still 
more, probably, his own position and the consciousness 
of his great reputation, were well calculated to disturb 
any man's mental balance ; but Franklin showed himself 
in all respects equal to the occasion ; and he never ex- 
hibited more unquestionable or higher proofs of the wide 
range of his political knowledge and sagacity, or of the 
acuteness, depth, clearness, and vigor, of his masculine 
understanding, in applying that knowledge in its mani- 
fold details, than he did in that severe test of his qualities 
before the house of commons. Self-collected and firm, 
yet with a modest dignity of deportment, he gave his 
answers with a readiness, perspicuity, directness, and 
manly boldness, which took his adversaries by surprise, 
and, while it commanded their respect, raised the admi- 
34* 



402 LIFE OF RENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ration and affection ofriis friends to enthusiasm. The 
interrogatories, one hundred and seventy-four in#nura- 
ber, took a wide range, and, with the answers, embraced 
all the main points of the condition of the colonies, their 
internal administration, capabilities, and burdens ; the 
aid they rendered the mother-country, and received from 
her; the extent of authority they conceded to her; their 
temper toward her prior to the passage of the stamp-act ; 
the effect which that measure, and especially the princi- 
ples on which it rested, had exerted on their sentiments, 
and the consequences which might be anticipated from 
pressing those principles — in short, the whole ground 
of colonial right and metropolitan power, with the con- 
duct and merits of the respective parties to the great 
issues presented. 

Our limits will admit only a cursory notice of a few 
prominent points of this examination. In arranging the 
provisions of the stamp-act, its framers seem to have ta- 
ken it for granted that the stamps could be circulated by 
post as conveniently in the colonies as in England. In 
reply to questions on this point, Franklin demonstrated 
the folly as well as injustice of the act, by showing that 
the mails were and could be carried, for the most part, 
only along the seaboard ; that the population generally 
was so thinly scattered over the great interior, that, to 
obtain stamps, the people would be compelled to make 
journeys at the expense of several pounds, in a large 
proportion of cases, in order to pay sixpence to the rev- 
enue ; and that as this was required in coin, there was 
not enough of it in the colonies to pay the duty for a 
single year, inasmuch as the course of trade took nearly 
the whole of their hard money to England. 

To the question, put by Mr. Grrenville — "Do you 
think it right that America should be protected by this 
country, and pay no part of the expense]" — Franklin 



EXAMINATION BEFORE PARLIAMENT. 403 

replied, " That is not the case. The colonies raised, 
clothed, and paid, during the last war, nearly twenty- 
five thousand men, and spent many millions ;" and to the 
further question — ** Were you not reimbursed by Par- 
liament V — it was answered, " We were only reimbursed 
what, in your opinion, we had advanced beyond our pro- 
portion ; and it was a very small part of what we spent. 
Pennsylvania disbursed about five hundred thousand 
pounds, and the whole reimbursement to her did not ex- 
ceed sixty thousand. Being asked if the people of Amer- 
ica would pay the stamp-duty if moderated, he replied, 
" No, never, unless compelled by force of arms." To 
the question, ** What was the temper of America tow- 
ard Great Britain before the year 1763 ]" Franklin an- 
swered, " The best in the world. They submitted wil- 
lingly to the government of the crown. . . . Numerous as 
the people are in the old provinces, they cost you noth- 
ing in forts, citadels, garrisons, or armies, to keep them 
in subjection. They were governed by this country at 
the expense only of a little pen, ink, and paper ; they 
were led by a thread. They had not only a respect, but 
an aifection, for Great Britain — for its laws, customs, 
manners, and even a fondness for its fashions, which 

greatly increased their commerce but that temper 

is very much altered now." 

To other questions, the import of which will be ap- 
prehended by the answers from which we cite, Franklin 
replied that " the authority of Parliament was allowed to 
be valid in all laws, except such as should lay internal 
taxes" — laws for the regulation of external commerce 
never being disputed ; that the population of the colonies 
doubled, on. an afverage, every twenty-five years, but that 
the demand for British manufactures increased much 
faster, consumption being affected not only by numbers 
but by the increase of wealth : as, in Pennsylvania, for 



404 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

example, the importati^ of British goods had risen from 
about fifteen thousand pounds, in 1723, to about half a 
million sterling, in 1763; that the colonies had been ac- 
customed to regard Parliament as " the great bulwark of 
their liberties and privileges ;" that " arbitrary ministers 
might, at times, attempt to oppress them, but they had 
relied on Parliament for redress," as in the "strong in- 
stance" when ministers proposed a bill to give ''royal 
instructions" the force o^ laws in the colonies, which the 
commons rejected; but that their respect for Parliament 
had been greatly lessened by " restraints lately laid on 
their trade," w^hich shut out gold and silver — by prohib- 
iting paper-money for their own use — and then by " de- 
manding a new and heavy tax on stamps ; taking away, 
at the same time, trials by juries, and refusing to receive 
and hear their petitions ;" that if any future tax should 
be imposed on them, upon the principles of the stamp- 
act, they would receive" it just as they do this — they 
would not pay it ; that they would regard any assertion 
of such principle by Parliament as " unconstitutional and 
unjust," because they could not be rightfully taxed where 
they were not represented." 

Having admitted the lawfulness of duties laid for the 
regulation of external trade, he was asked if he could 
show the smallest difference in principle between such 
duties and internal taxes. The question was of vital im- 
portance to the whole controversy, and came from the 
Grenville party. Franklin promptly answered that he 
thought the difference very great ; that the external tax, 
or duty on imports, passed, with freight and other charges, 
into the price of the commodity imported, and if the peo- 
ple did not choose to pay the price, they need not take 
the article. " But an internal tax is forced from the 
people without their consent, if not laid by their own 
representatives :" as, in the case of the stamp-act, they 



EXAMINATION BEFORE PARLIAMENT. 405 

were required to use the stamp, to render any of their 
contracts valid, and compelled to pay the duty under the 
peril of ruinous penalties. But suppose, as he was then 
asked, the external tax or import duty were laid on the 
necessaries of life used in the colonies, would not that be 
the same, in effect, as an internal tax '^ To this he an- 
swered, " I do not know a single article imported into 
the colonies, but what they can either do without, or 
make themselves ;" that English cloth was " by no means 
absolutely necessary;" that so far from its taking them 
a long time to supply themselves with clothing, " they had 
made surprising progress in that way already," and that 
" before their old clothes are worn out, they will have new 
ones of their own making;" that, for securing a supply 
of wool, they had " entered into combinations to eat no 
more lamb, and very few lambs had been killed in the 
last year;" that they did not need the large establish- 
ments which were necessary to the production of cloths 
for the purpose of trade, but their spinning and weaving 
were done in their own families 

The question returning again to the stamjD-act, Frank- 
lin was asked if anything short of military force could 
carry it into effect. To this he replied, " I do not see 
how military forces can be applied to it; they would find 
nobody in arms, and they could not compel a man to take 
stamps who should choose to do without them ; they 
would^^fZ no rebellion, though they might, indeed, jnake 
one ;" that if the act were not repealed, the consequence 
would be a " total loss of the respect and affection of the 
American people for Great Britain, and of all the com- 
merce thereby fostered ;" that they could do without 
British goods, and had already, by general agreement, 
discontinued the use of all the merely fashionable and 
more costly kinds. 

Being asked by Mr. Grenville if the postage rates were 



406 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

not a tax — " No," saicflrranklin, " postage is not of the 
nature of a tax; it is ^quantuin rucruit — a compensation 
for service rendered : no person is obliged to pay it, if 
he does not choose to receive the service ;" and being 
further asked if their ill humor would induce the Ameri- 
cans to pay as much for inferior goods of their own make 
as for better fabrics made in England, he replied, " Yes ; 
people will pay as freely to gratify one passion as anoth- 
er — their resentment as their pride." To the question 
whether the Americans would be content to have their 
tribunals of justice closed, and the enforcement of con- 
tracts suspended, rather than use the stamps necessary 
to legalize them, he gave the following bold and pregnant 
answer : ** It is hard to say what they would do. I can 
only judge how others would think and act, by what I 
feel myself. I have a great many debts due me in Amer- 
ica ; but I had rather they should remain unrecoverable 
by any law, than submit to the stamp-act. They will 
then be debts of honor. It is my opinion the people 
will either continue in that situation, or find some way 
to extricate themselves — perhaps by generally agreeing 
to proceed in the courts without stamps." Being asked 
if, in repealing the stamp-act. Parliament should in some 
way manifest its resentment toward the opposers of the 
act, would the colonies acquiesce in the authority of that 
body, Frankiin answered dryly — " I don't doubt at all, 
that if Parliament repeal the stamp-act, the colonies will 
acquiesce in the authority." 

It was then asked, if Parliament, merely to affirm its 
right to tax the colonies, should lay a tax on them, how- 
ever small, would they pay it. This question was put 
by a member who advocated the repeal of the stamp-act, 
and was designed to give an opportunity to present some 
important points more in connection than the course of 
inquiry had yet allowed. 



EXAMINATION BEFORE PARLIAMENT. 407 

Franklin's answer was full and discriminating. He 
called attention to the distinction between the settled con- 
victions of the reflecting classes as shown by the deliber- 
ate action of the public bodies, in the colonies, and the riot- 
ous proceedings in various places at the first outbreak of 
popular feeling, all which had been confounded together 
by the recent ministry and their adherents ; he testified 
that the Assemblies were opposed to all riots, and would 
punish their ringleaders if they had the power ; that they 
had not taken a single step toward forcible resistance, 
and had only declared their rights by peaceful resolu- 
tion and remonstrance, but that, as to any internal tax, 
however small, laid by a legislature in England on 
the colonists while unrepresented in that legislature, 
they would never submit to*it; that such a tax, moreo- 
ver, was wholly unnecessary, inasmuch as the colonial 
Assemblies had always promptly raised supplies, in the 
same way that Parliament raised them, that is, by re- 
quisition from the king; and yet the colonies were con- 
tinually misrepresented and abused, on this very point, 
in parliamentary speeches and partisan pamphlets, by 
false charges of ingratitude and injustice, as having put 
the nation to immense expense in defending them in the 
last war, while they refused to bear any part thereof, 
when they had, during that very war, kept in the field 
as many men as had been sent from England, that is to 
say, about twenty-five thousand, and by so doing had in- 
curred debts which would burden them for many years 
to come ; that this was far beyond their proportion, king, 
lords, and commons, had admitted by their reimbursing 
acts, though the million sterling thus granted fell far 
short of actual indemnification. 

When this strong answer had been rendered, Charles 
Townshend, one of the recent G-renville ministry, asked 
if the colonies would contribute to an English war in 



408 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Europe. Franklin replied that he thought they would, 
according to their ability ; that they considered them- 
selves as part of the British empire, though regarded in 
England as foreigners ; that in 1740, in the war with 
Spain, having been called on for aid to the expedition 
against Carthagena, on the Spanish Main, in South Amer- 
ica, and as far as Europe from the northern colonies, 
they sent three thousand men upon that ill-starred enter- 
prise ; that although the recent war with France was 
commonly spoken of in England as having been waged 
for the sake of America, that point was misunderstood; 
that it sprang from a question of limits between Nova 
Scotia and Canada, involving territory claimed by the 
crown, not by any of the colonies, and in which no colo- 
nists had any interest; that on the Ohio, also, hostilities 
sprang from French encroachment on British rights in 
the Indian trade, the seizure of British traders and their 
manufactures, and of a fort (Du Quesne) erected by those 
traders to protect that trade, which was not a colonial 
but a British interest altogether ; that it was only after 
Braddock's defeat, that the colonies were molested by 
the Indians or the French, with both of whom they had 
previously been at peace. Though the British troops, 
therefore, were not sent out for the sake of the colonies, 
and though the war originated wholly on British account, 
yet the colonies had given their best efforts to support it 
and bring it to a happy issue. 

Another adherent of the Grenville party, Mr. Nugent, 
having asked Franklin if he could deny that the prece- 
ding war with Spain was waged for the sake of America, 
caused as it was by Spanish captures made in American 
seas — " Yes," said Franklin, " caused by the capture of 
British ships carrying on a British trade there with Brit- 
ish manufactures." Mr, Grenville then asking if the re- 
cent Indian war, since the peace with France, was not 



EXAMINATION BEFORE PARLIAMENT. 409 

for America only — that war, said Franklin, was but 
the sequel of the other, and the colonies bore much the 
larger share of the cost, having been ended by General 
Bouquet with a force of above a thousand Pennsylva- 
nians, and only about three hundred regulars — for the 
small garrisons stationed at Niagara and Detroit, solely 
to protect the British trade with the Indians, should not 
be counted ; and being then asked if troops from Eng- 
land were not necessary to defend the colonies against 
the Indians — " No, by no means," replied Franklin, "it 
never was necessary. They defended themselves, when 
but a handful, and when the Indians were much more 
numerous, and had driven them over the mountains, with- 
out troops from England, and there is not the least occa- 
sion for them now." Being asked by Mr. Ellis, another 
member of the stamp-act ministry, if the colonial Assem- 
blies knew that the English statute called the Declaration 
of Rights forbids the raising money from any subject 
except by act of Parliament — Franklin replied that they 
knew it well ; that they held that statute to be an essen- 
tial part of the British constitution, but that it applied 
only to subjects within the realm ; that the colonies were 
not within the realm, any more than Ireland, but had 
their own Parliaments, or Assemblies, which, in conform- 
ity with the spirit of the great statute cited, and by their 
own charters, were vested with the power to tax their 
respective constituents, the people represented by them, 
while the Parliament of Great Britain had no right to 
levy an internal tax, either in Ireland or the colonies, 
until they were represented in that body : for the Decla- 
ration of Rights expressly says that such taxes can only 
be laid by common consent, and they had no representa- 
tives in that body to give their j)art of that common con- 
sent ; that in raising supplies on requisition, though the 
grant was, in terms, " to the king," yet his requisition 
35 



410 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

usually designated the occasion, and the money was 
raised in such way as the Assemblies themselves might 
deem most convenient to their constituents; that if the 
stamp-act were repealed, and the king should ask, in the 
usual way, for money from the colonies, he believed they 
would grant it, for the Assembly of Pennsylvania had 
expressly instructed him, as their agent, to say so, and 
he had communicated such instruction, before the passage 
of the stamp-act, to the minister who introduced it. 

Being asked if the Pennsylvania Assembly would re- 
scind their resolutions, provided Parliament would repeal 
the stamp-act, he said he thought not ; and being further 
asked if he did not know that there was a clause in the 
Pennsylvania charter expressly reserving to Parliament 
the right to levy taxes there, he answered that there was 
a clause by which the king covenants that he would levy 
no taxes there, unless with the consent of the Assembly, 
or by act of Parliament ; that the Assembly interpreted 
that clause in connection with Magna Charta, the Peti- 
tion and Declaration of Rights, and other fundamental 
parts of the British constitution, defining the rights and 
liberties of Englishmen ; that it is one of the rights thus 
secured, that they can not be taxed but by their common 
consent, which necessarily implied representation, as al- 
ready explained. 

It was then asked if the words of the charter to Penn 
expressed any distinction between internal and external 
taxes, and if, by his interpretation, the Assembly might not 
object to the latter class of taxes as well as the former. 
To this Franklin significantly replied : " Many arguments 
have been lately used here to show the Americans that 
there is no difference, and that if you have no right to tax 
them internally, you have none to tax them externally, 
or make any other law to bind them. At present, they 
do not reason so ; but, in time, they 77iay possibly be con- 



RESULT OF THE EXAMINATION. 411 

vinced by these arguments." The question being again 
pressed whether, if the stamp-act were repealed, the 
Assemblies would erase their resolutions, he replied — 
*' No, never ;" and being then asked if there v/as a power 
on earth that could force them to do so, he answered — 
*' None that I know of; no power, how great soever, can 
force men to change their opinions." The examination 
closed with recurring again to the former and existing 
tone of feeling among the colonists toward the mother- 
country, which Franklin illustrated by saying that " it 
used to be their pride to indulge in her fashions and 
manufactures ; but now it was their pride to wear their 
old clothes till they could make new ones." 

The effect of this examination on the members of Par- 
liament was obvious and powerful. Many British mer- 
chants, also, engaged in the American trade, sent in pe- 
titions in aid of those from the colonies ; and when the 
bill for repealing the stamp-act was taken up, though the 
late ministers and their adherents opposed it with great 
violence, yet, after a debate of much vehemence, it was 
carried through both houses, and received the king's as- 
sent about the middle of March. Writing to his old 
Philadelphia friend Roberts, on the 27th of February, 
1766, just after the repeal-bill had passed the house of 
commons, Franklin says : " I hope I have done even my 
enemies some service in our struggle for America. It 
has been a hard one, and we have been often between 
hope and despair; but now the day begins to clear. . . . 
The partisans of the late ministry have been strongly 
crying out, 'Rebellion!' and calling iox force to be sent 
against America. The consequence might have been 
terrible, but milder measures have prevailed." After 
the bill had become a law, he wrote to his wife, on the 
6th of April : "As the stamp-act is at length repealed, I 
am willing you should have a new gown, which you may 



412 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

suppose I aid not send sooner, as I knew you would not 
like to be finer than your neighbors, unless in a gown of 
your own spinning. Had the trade between the two 
countries totally ceased, it was a comfort to me to recol- 
lect that I had once been clothed from head to foot in 
woollen and linen of my wife's manufacture — that I 
never was prouder of any dress in my life — and that 
she and her daughter might do it again, if necessary." 

The news of the repeal of the stamp-act — ** that moth- 
er of mischiefs," as Franklin styled it in a letter to a 
friend in Boston — and of the conspicuous and most effec- 
tive services by which he had contributed to that repeal, 
filled his friends in America with the liveliest exultation. 
One of those friends, Joseph Galloway, an able and ac- 
tive man, writing to Franklin's son, then governor of New 
Jersey, under date of the 29th of April, says : " It gives 
me a pleasure I can not well express, to hear that Dr. 
Franklin was examined at the bar of the house of com- 
mons. Dr. Fothergill writes thus to WilHam Logan, 
and that he gave * such distinct, clear, and satisfactory 
answers to every interrogatory, and spoke his sentiments 
on the subject with such perspicuity and firmness, as did 
him the highest honor, and was of the greatest service to 
the American cause.' " The letters from Dr. Fothergill, 
"Whitefield, and others present at the examination, were 
full of praise and admiration for the manner in which 
Franklin acquitted himself on that occasion. One says : 
** Our worthy friend. Dr. Franklin, has gained immortal 
honor by his behavior at the bar of the house. The an- 
swerer was always found equal if not superior to the 
questioner. He stood unappalled, gave pleasure to his 
friends, and did honor to his country." Another says : 
" I can safely assert, from my own personal knowledge, 
that Dr. Franklin did all in his power to prevent the 
stamp-act from passing ; that he waited upon the minis- 



FRANKLIN S SERVICES ACKNOWLEDGED. 413 

try that then was, to inform them fully of its mischievous 
tendency ; that he has uniformly opposed it to the utmost 
of his ability ; and that in a long examination before the 
house of commons, he asserted the rights and privileges 
of A-merica with the utmost firmness, resolution, and ca- 
pacity:" and another, after similar statements, adds: 
" He did himself great credit, and served your cause not 
a little. I believe he has left nothing undone that he 
imagined would serve his country." The examination 
being published a few months afterward, it was imme- 
diately translated into French and circulated over Eu- 
rope. When the news, that the bill repealing the stamp- 
act had been consummated by the assent of the king, 
reached America in authentic form, the colonial Assem- 
blies passed resolutions of thanks to the king and Parlia- 
ment ; and they expressed also their deep sense of the 
service rendered by Franklin to the general cause of 
American rights. In Pennsylvania, the acknowledgments 
of the great services of their agent were peculiarly warm, 
not only from the Assembly, but on the part of the in- 
habitants. Philadelphia was illuminated ; and on the 
4th of June, the king's birthday, the occasion was cele- 
brated by a feast on the banks of the Schuylkill. A ves- 
sel named the " Franklin" took a throng of his friends to 
the banquet ; the royal family, the Parliament, the prom- 
inent advocates of the act of repeal, were toasted and 
saluted with artillery, and Franklin's name especially 
was, there and everywhere, " freshly remembered." In- 
deed, a large portion of the proprietary party, the well- 
meaning men, who had been misled by false representa- 
tions of Franklin's motives and conduct, now came to 
the knowledge of so much evidence of his disinterested 
zeal and efficient effort in behalf of colonial rights, that 
they laid aside their prejudices ; and only a few ambi- 
tious and mercenary men, who could not forgive him for 
85* 



414 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

his merits and his fam^'emained openly hostile to him. 
And although the Grenville party, by their gross mis- 
representations of the state of facts and feelings in the 
colonies, and by their appeals, both in Parliament and 
through the press, to the national pride of the English 
people, aided undoubtedly by some unnecessary and im- 
prudent heat on the part of Mr. Pitt, in denouncing them 
and their policy, had succeeded in carrying a declaratory 
act affirming the right of Parliament to hind the colonies 
in all cases whatsoever — yet this assertion of an abstract 
principle, though it cast at once some shade of appre- 
hension over the minds of all reflecting men, did not, for 
the time, appear to repress the public joy for the practi- 
cal benefit obtained in the repeal of the stamp-act, which 
was greeted as a token that, whatever might be the ab- 
stract claims in behalf of British sovereignty, the attempt 
to enforce them by actual legislation would be relin- 
quished as an unwise policy. 

In the midst of his strenuous and multifarious exertions 
in the cause of the colonies, however, Franklin did not 
wholly suspend his philosophic correspondence. One of 
his letters, written in the summer of 1765, on the char- 
acter of the old and simple Scottish tunes, is too remark- 
able to be passed without notice. This topic was sug- 
gested by some remarks on music, as an object of taste, 
as well as a source of enjoyment, in the " Elements of 
Criticism" by Lord Kames, to whom Franklin addressed 
his letter. He holds that the pleasure derived by artists 
and other practised musicians, from pieces of great com- 
pass and intricate variety, does not arise from either the 
melody or the harmony of the sounds, but from the skill 
and dexterity displayed in the performance of difficult 
passages, and is similar, in kindt to the pleasure derived 
from the wonderful feats of agility and hazard performed 
by rope-dancers and tumblers ; and that it is for the want 



THE OLD SCOTTISH TUNES. 415 

of training in the difficult parts of music, that people 
who have only a natural ear for the "concord of sweet 
sounds," do not enjoy these intricacies of musical com- 
position, while the natural melodies and simple harmonies 
of the traditionary airs mentioned, fill them with delight. 
After quoting the remark of Kames that "melody and 
harmony are separately agreeable, and in union delight- 
ful," Franklin proceeds with characteristic acuteness and 
good sense, to analyze the tunes in question and the 
pleasure they impart, substantially as follows : He main- 
tains that those tunes do, in fact, present the very union 
suggested by Kames, not simultaneously, indeed, but in 
succession ; and he explains this seeming paradox by say- 
ing that, although in strictness inelody is a succession of 
musical sounds, and liarmGny their coexistence, yet, as the 
mind retains a perfect idea of the pitch of each note in a 
series till the next note is sounded, those notes are as 
truly compared, and the enjoyment arising from their 
harmony is the same, as if they were both sounded to- 
gether. 

To show the correctness of his position, he refers to 
the readiness with which a note, on being sounded, is re- 
peated in the same pitch, whether by the voice or the 
string of an instrument ; and to the fact that, when two 
notes are not in unison, though the dissonance is per- 
ceived when they are sounded together, yet tvhicJi is 
wrong is perceived only when they are sounded succes- 
sively. These perceptions, moreover, he thinks are not 
merely recollected, hvil arise from a continuance of those 
vibrations of the ear-drum, by which the sensation of 
sound is excited in the auditory nerve ; as, with the other 
organs of sense, the impressions made on them remain 
more or less distinct for a time after the several objects 
producing them are removed. 

Having established this point in the philosophy of mu- 



416 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

sical perception, lie p^rceecls to show that, in the com- 
position of the tunes in question, " almost every succeed- 
ing emjphatical note is a third, a fifth, an octave, or some 
note in concord with the ^^rece^Zm^ note ; thirds, which 
are very pleasing notes, being chiefly used," Moreover, 
when it is considered that these tunes were composed by 
ancient minstrels, to be played on the harp, accompanied 
by the voice, the harmonical succession of notes seems 
not only natural but necessary ; inasmuch as the wire of 
the ancient harp prolonged the note, and had no means 
of stopping it the instant a succeeding one was struck. 
" To avoid actual discord it was therefore necessary that 
the next emphatic note should be a chord with the pre- 
ceding one, as their sounds must exist at the same time." 
That the old harp was " of the simplest kind, without 
any half-notes but those in the natural scale, with no 
more than two octaves of strings, from C to C," he infers 
from the fact that " not one of those tunes, really ancient, 
has a single artificial half-note in it, and that in cases 
where it was most convenient for the voice to use the 
middle notes of the harp, and place the key in F, the B, 
which if used should be a B flat, is always omitted, by 
passing over it with a third." 

Such is the physical analysis; and tlience, says Frank- 
lin, " ardse the beauty in those tunes that have so long 
pleased, and will please for ever, though men scarcely 
know why." It may be added these airs are marked by 
a singleness of character answering to the several emo- 
tions they are intended to express ; and being thus found 
in unison with our moral as well as our organic struc- 
ture, they are intelligible to all, and obtain the response 
of all hearts. 



VISIT TO THE CONTINENT. 417 



CHAPTER XXV. 

VISIT TO THE CONTINENT TRUE RELATIONS OF AMER- 
ICA TO ENGLAND VISITS PARIS CHANGES IN THE 

CABINET LORD HILLSBOROUGH VISIT TO IRELAND 

LIGHTNING-RODS FOR POWDER MAGAZINES HE AD- 
VISES FIRMNESS AND MODERATION IN AMERICA THE 

HUTCHINSON LETTERS INEFFECTUAL ATTEMPTS AT 

CONCILIATION RETURNS HOME. 

Franklin's arduous exertions during the pendency of 
the stamp-act question, not only in the long and exciting 
examination before the house of commons, but in urging 
upon ministers and other leading men, in personal inter- 
views as well as private correspondence, and upon the 
public through the press, the multifarious considerations 
which ought to insure the repeal of the obnoxious act, 
seriously impaired his health. Writing to his wife on 
the 13th of June, 1766, he says : ** I wrote you that I 
had been very ill lately. I am now nearly well again, 
but feeble. To-morrow I set out with my friend Dr. 
Pringle (now Sir John) on a journey to Pyrmont, where 
he goes to drink the waters." Franklin having, the year 
before, omitted taking one of his customary annual jour- 
neys, had felt the bad effect of that omission on his health 
very sensibly, as he thought, during the preceding win- 
ter and spring; and in this excursion to the continent he 
looked for benefit, not to the waters his friend was seek- 
ing, but to the exercise of travel, the change of air, new 
scenes, and more ao;reeable and varied forms of mental 



418 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

entertainment. He was absent about two months, and 
spent the time chiefly in Hanover and the north of 
Germany. Wherever he went he was received with dis- 
tinguished attention by the learned ; for his fame had 
been long spread throughout Europe, and his merits as 
a philosopher were more highly and therefore more justly 
appreciated on the continent than in Great Britain. No 
details of this journey are to be found among his wri- 
tings ; but there is a letter, in Latin, from Professor 
Hartman, of the university of Gottingen, received by 
Franklin some months afterward, which well exemplifies 
the exalted esteem in which he was held by the learned 
Germans. The professor speaks of the great pleasure 
with which he recollected the day on which he first saw 
and conversed with him; of his deep regret at not hav- 
ing been able then to show him any new experiments 
in electricity worthy of his attention ; that the prince 
Schwartzenburg of Rudolstadt, (who corresponded with 
the professor,) on hearing of Franklin's visit to Germany, 
had expressed his earnest wish to become personally 
acquainted with him, and for that pui-pose had sent a 
learned friend to Gottingen with his salutations, who ar- 
rived the very day of Franklin's departure ; that as the 
prince had requested of the professor directions for the 
most proper form of the lightning-rod, which he wished 
to introduce into his own territories, the professor so- 
licited from Franklin his most matured views on that 
point ; that as he contemplated writing a complete his- 
tory of electricity, and as there was no name connected 
with that subject so great as Franklin's, he begged of 
him an account of his first experiments and discoveries ; 
that he relied on Franklin's goodness to excuse so bold 
a request ; that compliance with it would give him great 
happiness, and that he should always be glad of any op 
portunity to promote his wishes. 



VIEWS OP LORD KAMES. 419 

Franklin, on his return to England, upon this second 
mission, having renewed his correspondence with Lord 
Karnes, received a letter, written a little before the ex- 
amination in the house of commons, in v/hich that lib- 
eral-minded nobleman expressed his views very freely 
on the American question. The general accordance of 
those views with his own gratified Franklin exceedingly, 
but he saw mingled with them several mistakes, derived 
from the English press, concerning some important facts ; 
and to set his friend right, he sent, with his reply, a re- 
port of the examination mentioned. In his reply he ob- 
served also that it had become particularly important that 
" clear ideas should be formed on solid principles, both 
in Britain and America, of the true political relation be- 
tween them, and the mutual duties belonging to that re- 
lation ;" and he therefore urged his lordship to consider 
the subject deliberately and fully, as, from his high ju- 
dicial position, his abilities, and impartiality, he was pe- 
culiarly well qualified to render the nation very great 
service. It seems that Lord Karnes had, in his letter, 
expressed himself in favor of such a union between the 
two countries as should give the colonies their just pro- 
portion of representatives in Parliament. To this view 
Franklin, in his reply, fully assents, (it was, indeed, as 
we have seen, one he had long held,) as " the only firm 
basis on which the political grandeur and prosperity of 
the empire could be founded;" that the colonies would 
once have gladly adopted it, but had now become in- 
different to it, and, if much longer delayed, would re- 
ject it; that the pride of England would delay it, and it 
would never take effect. He adds : " Every man in 
England seems to consider himself as a piece of a sov- 
ereign over America ; seems to jostle himself into the 
throne with the king, and talks of our subjects in the colo- 
nies. The Parliament can not well and wisely make 



420 LIFE OF liENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

laws suited to the colonies, without being properly and 
truly informed of their circumstances, ability, temper, 
&c. This it can not be, without representatives from 
them; and yet it [Parliament] is fond of this power, and 
averse to the only means of acquiring the necessary 
knowledge for exercising it ; which is desiring to be om- 
nipotent without hemg omniscient.^' In the course of his 
letter, which is long and able, he sketches the history of 
the colonies ; exposes the gross mistake, which had be- 
come quite common in England, that they had been 
planted and fostered by Parliament, whcJreas, they were 
planted solely at the expense and risk of private persons^ 
with the assent of the king and under charters from liirti ; 
and on those conditions consented to continue the king's 
subjects, though in a foreign country, which had not been 
conquered by England, to which she had no claim of any 
kind beyond the naked, abstracj; claim of discovery, and 
where there was no proprietorship in the soil except that 
of the colonists, who purchased, settled, defended, and 
enlarged their territories with their own individual means 
and at their own personal peril. In fact. Parliament had 
never been consulted on the subject, at any time or in 
any manner, either by colonist or king, and had never 
noticed the colonies at all, until long after they had thus 
become established, and began to present temptations to 
the covetousness of wealth and power — to promise ad- 
vantages to the commerce of the mother-country, and 
aggrandizement to her ambitious statesmen and their 
partisans. The colonists, having taken their charters 
from the king, and having thus acknowledged allegiance 
to him as their common sovereign, with the express right 
of legislating upon their own internal affairs in their own 
Assemblies, made up of representatives chosen by them- 
selves, associated with governors and judges represent- 
ing the executive and judicial authority of the king, they 



TRUE POLITICAL RELATIONS OF THE COLONIES. 421 

constituted, in truth, so many separate states, acknowl- 
edging one common sovereign, indeed, but as indepen- 
dent of the people of England and their legislative rep- 
resentatives, as they were of each other, or as were the 
people of Scotland prior to their union, or as the people 
of Ireland and of Hanover then were. 

In short, the people of America, in their respective 
colonies, stood on the same footing of equality with the 
people of England, being subjects of the same king, but 
having their own separate constitutions, that is to say, 
their charters, which secured to them, in express terms, 
the right of legislating for themselves by representatives 
of their own choice, and managing their own affairs in 
all respects independently of the representatives of their 
English fellow-subjects ; and whatever powers the king 
himself possessed, were vested in him, in point of fact, 
by their own consent, through the charters they held 
from him, and by all those parts of the British constitu- 
tion itself which limited, or in any way affected the royal 
prerogative. This was the broad and free basis of equal 
rights on which Franklin and other eminent American 
patriots, but he among the first and most influential 
of them all, placed the colonies ; on which the people of 
those colonies, under such guidance, fast rallied ; and on 
which they *tood with unshaken firmness, at the ultimate 
peril of " their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred 
honor." 

At the time now spoken of, however, though Franklin 
and some of his great compatriots were resolved to main- 
tain the ground described, at every hazard, yet none of 
them had yet begun to broach the doctrine of absolute 
independence. They thought not merely that the colo- 
nies were not yet strong enough for a total rupture with 
the mother-country, but that their connection might still 
be rendered more useful to America, as well as to Brit- 
36 



422 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

aiii, if the statesmen of the latter could be induced to 
adopt wise counsels, waive their extravagant claims of 
power, and pursue a liberal and conciliatory policy. To 
attain this purpose, they labored in good faith toward 
both parties, pressing their arguments with earnest and 
honest zeal, and occasionally uttering their warnings with 
manly boldness and prophetic sagacity. A passage in 
the latter tone occurs near the close of the letter to Lord 
Karnes, and it marks the forecast of Franklin too strongly 
to be omitted. Having intimated that the union men- 
tioned was probably more important, after all, to Britain 
than to America, he proceeds : " America may suffer at 
present under the arbitrary power of this country; she 
may suffer, for a while, in a separation from it ; but these 
are temporary evils which she will outgrow. Scotland 
and Ireland are differently circumstanced. Confined by 
the sea, they can scarcely increase in numbers, wealth, 
and strength, so as to overbalance England. But Amer- 
ica, an immense territory, favored by nature with all ad- 
vantages of climate, soils, great navigable rivers, lakes, 
&c., must become a great country, populous and mighty ; 
and will, in less time than is generally conceived, be able 
to shake off any shackles that may be imposed upon her, 
and perhaps place them on the imposers. In the mean- 
time, every act of oppression will sour the tempers of 
her people, lessen greatly if not annihilate the profits of 
your commerce with them, and hasten their final revolt; 
for the seeds of liberty are universally found there, and 
nothing can eradicate them. And yet there remains 
among that people so much respect, veneration, and af- 
fection for Britain, that, if cultivated prudently, with kind 
usage and tenderness for tlieir privileges, they might 
be easily governed still for ages, without force, or any 
considerable expense. But I do not see here a suf- 



VISIT TO PARIS. 423 

ficient quantity of the wisdom necessary to produce such 
conduct." 

In the autumn of 1767, Franklin, in company with his 
friend Sir John Pringle, took an excursion to France. 
The French embassador, M. Durand, who had become 
much interested in American affairs and cultivated Frank- 
lin's society, furnished him with many letters of intro- 
duction, and when he arrived at Paris, he was treated 
with much distinction. He visited Versailles, where, 
with his friend, he was presented to the royal family ; 
and besides seeing whatever was curious or striking in 
the capital, he formed many valuable acquaintances. In 
a letter to Miss Stevenson, giving her a pleasant account 
of this jaunt, he says of French manners : " The civili- 
ties we everywhere receive give us the strongest impres- 
sions of French politeness. It seems to be a point set- 
tled here universally that strangers are to be treated with 
respect; and one has the same deference shown him here 
by being a stranger, as in England by being a lady.^^ 
His visit gratified him very much, and in the letter just 
mentioned he remarks that " travelling is one way of 
lengthening life, at least in appearance. It is but about 
a fortnight since we left London, but the variety of scenes 
we have gone through makes it seem equal to six months 
living in one place." 

A recent act of Parliam.ent laying duties on certain 
articles imported into the colonies, and providing for a 
board of commissioners to be sent out from England to col- 
lect those duties, with some other enactments taking from 
the colonial Assemblies their long-exercised privilege 
of fixing as well as paying the salaries of their governors, 
judges, and other officers, and transferring the fixing 
of the amount of such salaries to the king, had produced 
great excitement in the colonies. This power in the As- 
semblies had been useful in giving them some control over 



424 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

the conduct of the officer in question. The action of Par- 
liament in this matter gave them much dissatisfaction, and 
resolutions of abold and high-toned character, recommend- 
ing measures to encourage the products and manufactures 
of their own people and diminish the use of imports, were 
passed at Boston, which, on reaching England, roused 
the pride and embittered the animosity of the ministers 
and the party by which the acts in question had been 
passed, and embarrassed also the friends of a more lib- 
eral colonial policy. To appease the feelings thus ex- 
asperated by the Boston resolutions, and to give the 
English public a correct view of the state of sentiment 
in the colonies, Franklin wrote a valuable paper on the 
" Causes of the American Discontents before 1768," and 
had it published early in January, 1768, just as Parlia- 
ment came together. Written in a cool and candid tem- 
per, it traced rapidly but clearly the progress of what 
the Americans deemed British encroachment; and con- 
trasted, in a striking manner, tlie content of the colonies 
prior to the stamp-act, with their condition since : and its 
effect was such as to calm exasperation, for a time at least, 
and produce a somewhat more favorable disposition in 
regard to colonial interests. 

The Boston resolutions, however, gave a strong im- 
pulse to the other colonies, which soon followed in the 
expression of similar sentiments. Franklin, writing to 
his son, the governor of New Jersey, on this subject, in 
December, 1767, says : " If our people should follow the 
Boston example, by entering into resolutions of frugality 
and industry, full as necessary for us as for them, I hope 
they will among other things give this reason : that it is 
to enable them more speedily to discharge their debts to 
Great Britain." This prudent and honest suggestion of 
Franklin harmonized, as it subsequently appeared, with 
the sentiments of Washington, who, when the people of 



CHANGES IN THE MINISTRY. 425 

Virginia were advised to put a stop to both their imports 
and exports, with the design of procuring the repeal of the 
offensive laws, disapproved of the latter part of the prop- 
osition, though in favor of the former. " If we owe money 
in Great Britain," said he, "nothing but the last neces- 
sity can justify the non-payment of it; and I wish to see 
the other method first tried, which is legal, and will facil- 
itate the payments." 

The year 1768 opened with changes in the ministry. 
These proved unfavorable to the claims of the colonies, 
not only because some of the Grenville party took places, 
but more particularly because, in the department of co- 
lonial affairs. Lord Shelburne, who was friendly to Amer- 
ica, and a man of even temper and easy of access, was 
superseded by Lord Hillsborough, who, though gener- 
ally deemed a man of abilities and probity, was stiff in 
his opinions, pertinacious as to forms, liable to preju- 
dice, of a capricious temper, and not easily accessible ; 
and in addition to all this, to cite the authority of Mr. 
Johnson, the able and enlightened agent of Connecticut, 
the whole business of the colonies had necessarily to take 
new channels ; new connections had to be formed ; ne- 
gotiations, which had made some progress, had all to be 
commenced anew, and great delays would be the conse- 
quence. Besides, when the question concerning the re- 
peal of the act of Parliament forbidding the issue of 
paper-money in the colonies, was brought before the 
board of trade, in the previous year, Lord Hillsborough, 
then at the head of that board, had drawn a report strongly 
against the repeal solicited by the colonial agents, which 
report Franklin had answered in a paper of remarkable 
ability ; and though his lordship, on taking charge of 
American affairs, treated Franklin with much civility, 
yet it became evident before long that the masterly an- 
swer of the colonial agent had not convinced the colonial 
36* " 



426 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

secretary. Wlien, ho\vever, after his new appointment, 
Franklin waited on him, he admitted that the answer was 
an able one, and presented stronger reasons in favor of 
the currency in question than he had supposed to exist; 
and at the same interview, Franklin having explained to 
him the state of the question respecting the change pe- 
titioned for in the government of Pennsylvania, the new 
secretary told him he would examine the subject and 
confer with him upon it again. These and other cir- 
cumstances gave rise to a rumor that Franklin was to be 
appointed under-secretary to Lord Hillsborough ; on 
which the former remarks, in a letter to his son, that 
there was little likelihood of it, as it was a settled point 
that he was too much of an American. 

A different proposition, however, was made to Frank- 
lin, which involved his removal as head of the American 
postoffice, and the proffer of some other appointment, 
which, though not mentioned, seems to have been intend- 
ed to be such a one as would withdraw him from all direct 
connection with American affairs. But he neither felt 
nor showed any desire for office, being content with 
his position. Indeed, his removal from his place as dep- 
uty-postmaster-general of the colonies, would not have 
given him any chagrin, as he wrote to his son, if his " zeal 
for America'' were to be the reason ; in which, as he 
states, "some of my friends have hinted to me that I 
have been too open." To this he adds a remark that 
shows his foresight, at that early and comparatively tran- 
quil day, of the inevitable result of the doctrines then 
held by the British government. " If Mr. Grenville," 
says he, " comes into power again, in any department 
respecting America, I must refuse accepting anything 
that may seem to put me in his power, because / appre- 
hend a hreacli hetivcen the two countries ;^^ adding — " If 
it were not for the flatteriuGc expectation that by being 



POLITICAL PROSPECTS. 427 

here, I might more effectually serve my country, I 
should certainly determine for retirement, without a 
moment's hesitation." 

Franklin's enemies in Pennsylvania endeavored to 
use this rumor of proffered ministerial favors, to his in- 
jury ; but their efforts v^^ere unavailing. So strong w^as 
he in the confidence of his countiymen everywhere, that 
in the summer of 1768 he received from the governor of 
Georgia credentials of his appointment as agent for that 
colony ; while every arrival from Pennsylvania and the 
northern colonies furnished fresh evidence of their 
growing esteem for him. The changes, however, in the 
ministry, which had taken place, and were anticipated, 
with the dissolution of Parliament and the new elections, 
had produced so much confusion and delay in public 
business, that, seeing no prospect of advancing the chief 
object of his mission, he was preparing to return to 
America when the appointment from Georgia reached 
im ; and though his private affairs made him anxious to 
e at home, yet that appointment, together with the ur- 
gent expostulations of the friends of America, and a 
growing apprehension of the restoration of Mr. Gren- 
ville and his party to power, induced him to remain in 
England a few months longer ; for, as he observed in a 
letter written in February, 1769, to Lord Kames, things 
were daily looking worse, with an increasing tendency 
" to a breach and final separation." 

That this opinion was correct became still more evi- 
dent in the ensuing spring. Near the end of April he 
wrote to a friend in Boston : " The Parhament remains 
fixed in the resolution not to repeal the duty acts this 
session, and will rise next Tuesday. I hope my coun- 
trymen will remain as fixed in their resolutions of indus- 
try and frugality, till these acts are repealed ; and, if I 
could be sure of that, I should almost wish them never 



428 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

to be repealed ; bein ^persuaded that we shall reap 
more solid and extensive advantages from the steady 
practice of those two great virtues, than we can suffer 
damage from all the duties Parliament can levy on us. 
They flatter themselves you can not subsist without their 
manufactures ; that you have not virtue enough to per- 
sist in such agreements ; that the colonies will desert one 
another, and return to the use of British fineries. The 
ministerial people all talk in this strain, and many even 
of the merchants. I have ventured to assert that they 
will all find themselves mistaken." His confidence in 
the firmness of his cou)itrymen was well vindicated by 
their conduct ; and from a letter to his sister, Mrs. Me- 
com, it is evident that the women of America were as 
resolute as the men : ** The account you write," says he, 
" of the growing industry, frugality, and good sense of 
my countrywomen, gives me more pleasure than you 
can imagine ; for from thence I presage great advanta- 
ges to our country." He wrote to the same effect to 
the committee of merchants in Philadelphia, and that iP 
the people would steadily persist in " using colony man- 
ufactures only, it would, he trusted, be the means, under 
God, of recovering and establishing the freedom of the 
country entire, and handing it down to posterity." 

Franklin, who was ever intent on being useful, and 
had urged, on various occasions, and with much earnest- 
ness, the cultivation of silk in the colonies, sent, in Sep- 
tember, 1769, to his friend and correspondent. Dr. Evans, 
of Philadelphia, an elaborate treatise, then recently pub- 
lished in France, on the management of silk- worms, 
with a letter from himself giving some account of the 
other processes in the production of silk and sending it 
to market. The British government had offered a boun- 
ty on the raw silk from the colonies, and Franklin be- 
lieved them peculiarly well adapted to the production 



SILK NEW JERSEY AGENCY. 429 

of it. In his letter lie expresses the opinion that, if the 
assembly of Pennsylvania would make some provision 
to encourage the planting of mulberry-trees in the prov- 
ince, the chief difficulty would be overcome. Silk he 
considered as "the happiest of all inventions for cloth- 
ing." While wool requires much land for its produc- 
tion, the sheep yield but little food, compared to the 
quantity the same land would supply in grain ; and that 
flax and hemp not only impoverish the richest soil, but 
they supply no food at all ; while the mulberry-tree may 
be so planted as to take little or no land from other 
uses, and silken garments outwear all others. " Hence 
it is," says he, ** that the most populous of all countries, 
China, clothes its inhabitants with silk, while it feeds 
them plentifully, and has besides a vast quantity of silk, 
both raw and manufactured, to spare for exportation." 

Dr. Evans and some others in Pennsylvania, formed 
an association for the culture of silk, and persevered in 
their enterprise till they were constrained to relinquish 
it by the breaking out of the war for American inde- 
pendence. 

On the 8th of November, 1769, the assembly of New 
Jersey unanimously appointed Franklin agent for that 
colony, making the third whose affairs with the Brit- 
ish government were now placed in his charge. One 
of the more important matters thus committed to him 
was the procurement of the king's interposition for the 
rightful adjustment of the boundary line between East 
and West Jersey ; and another, the most pressing of all, 
was his majesty's signature to an act of the assembly for 
issuing bills of credit, secured by funds pledged, by the 
same act, for their redemption, and to be put into circu- 
lation by loans of various amounts at an interest of five 
per cent, per annum, but not to be made a legal tender, 
against which there was a prohibitory act of Parliament, 



430 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

passed two or tliiee j'Wis before and applicable to all 
the colonies. The letter of instructions from the assem- 
bly's committee is brief, simply enumerating the several 
matters placed in his hands, accompanied by the remark 
that, " to a gentleman, whose inclination to serve the 
colonies was believed equal to his knowledge of their 
true interests, much need not be said to induce his at- 
tention to American concerns." 

About the same time, also, Franklin received a letter 
from a Boston committee, transmitting a corres2:)ondence 
between them and Governor Bernard, General Gage, 
Commodore Hood, and the commissioners of customs, 
relatinsf to the revenue act, and to the sentiments and 
conduct of the respective parties ; the committee re- 
questitig Franklin to defend the Bostonians from the 
aspersions of the governor and the other crown officers 
mentioned, to whose arbitrary proceedings the troubles 
in that quarter were to be ascribed. Those officers and 
the British functionaries in other colonies, by misrepre- 
senting the conduct of the colonists, misled both the 
Parliament and the ministry. Among other things, they af- 
firmed in their despatches, that the combinations in Amer- 
ica against importing and consuming British goods, were 
all breaking up; that the people, distressed by the want 
of such goods, could not refuse them much longer, and 
must shortly submit to such terms as Parliament might 
think fit to impose. To such accounts was attrib- 
uted much of the obstinacy, with which the petitions 
from America for the repeal of the obnoxious revenue 
acts, were resisted in Parliament, and the tenacity with 
which the doctrine of absolute sovereignty over the col- 
onies was maintained in that body; so that although the 
statements of the colonial agents and the actual return 
of ships from America with the very cargoes they had 
taken out, made some impression on the minds of the 



THE TAXING POWER. 431 

more liberal members of Parliament, yet wlieii,in April, 
1770, the subject was brought forward in that body, the 
best bill that could be carried was one which repealed 
the duties, except that on tea, but still retaining the pre- 
amble of the former act, which asserted the unrestricted 
authority of Parliament to tax the colonies in all cases. 

This measure was adopted on the avowed ground of 
concihation, and the duty on tea was retained for the 
professed reason that it was not a British production; 
but the principle of the bill, nevertheless, remained the 
same ; and it was that principle against which the objec- 
tions of the colonies were mainly levelled. The new 
act, therefore, instead of satisfying and appeasing the 
American people, sei'ved only to alarm and exasperate 
them still more ; for little tea being used at that period 
in the colonies, the duty on it was too petty an object 
for revenue, and the new act, therefore, left the real in- 
tention of Parliament to adhere to its claim of power, 
more palpable than ever ; and the colonists, so far from 
dissolving their leagues against the consumption of Brit- 
ish merchandise of any sort, gave those leagues fresh 
vigor and still wider efficiency. 

The knowledge of this effect of the new act in the 
colonies soon went back to England ; and as Franklin 
had been particularly conspicuous in asserting colonial 
rights, and as his letters to the leading patriots of Amer- 
ica had been denounced as having produced much of 
the feeling exhibited by the people of the colonies, a 
rumor now began to spread that his office of deputy 
postmaster-general of the colonies was to be taken from 
him. The ministerial press in England became more 
abusive than ever, with the design, as he thought, of in- 
ducing him to relinquish the office by his own act ; for, 
after all, ministers felt that their removal of him, as a 
punishment for the zeal and ability with which he had 



432 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

served his own country, would not strengthen them, and 
they would willingly be saved from the odium of such a 
step. 

Franklin, however, remained steadfast, and was not 
removed till a later period. His language on the occa- 
sion was firm and explicit. His political opinions, he 
said, had long been well known, and he could not be 
expected to change them every time the king might think 
fit to change his ministers ; that in his letters to friends 
in Ameiica, as in all he had said and written in Eng- 
land, he had only done his duty to his country ; and that 
no concern for office could alter his course, or his rule of 
doing what he deemed right, leaving results to Provi- 
dence. 

One of his American correspondents was the Rev. 
Samuel Cooper, of Boston, an able man, and a stanch 
patriot, from whom Franklin received much valuable in- 
formation respecting the progress of events in the colo- 
nies, and to whom he communicated his own sentiments 
without reserve. From parts of this correspondence it 
seems plain that the more leading patriots of that day, 
in Boston, who were generally much younger men than 
Franklin, had not yet formed as profound and thoroughly- 
digested opinions as he had, of the true political rela- 
tions of the two countries ; and when they now per- 
ceived the full reach of his views, they were not only 
convinced of his sagacity, but they also saw, more clearly 
than ever, the importance of his position ; and they 
wisely sought to strengthen it, not only for the sake of 
their own local interests, but also to aid the general cause 
of colonial rights. With these views the assembly of 
Massachusetts appointed him agent for that colony, on 
the 24th of October, 1770; and as the term was annual, 
he was reappointed every year during his residence in 
England. 



LORD HILLSBOROUGH. 433 



Soon after receiving the certificate of his agency, 
Franklin waited on the secretary for the colonies, Lord 
Hillsborough, to present it, and acquaint him with the 
objects of his appointment. The behavior of his lord- 
ship at this interview, which took place on the 16th of 
January, 1771, exhibited a mixture of petulant anger 
and insolence as unbecoming as it was strange. When 
Franklin first presented himself he was received with 
due courtesy ; but when he began to state the objects of 
his new agency, the moment he mentioned the name of 
Massachusetts, his lordship sneeringly cut him short, tel- 
ling him he was not agent ; and when Franklin replied 
tha't he had his credentials in his pocket, the secretary 
told him he was mistaken, for he had himself received a 
letter from Governor Hutchinson, stating that he (Hutch- 
inson) had refused to sign the bill making the appoint- 
ment. Franklin rephed that no bill was necessary, as 
he was the assembly's agent, not the governor's, with 
whom he had nothing to do ; and when his lordship sum- 
moned his under-secretary to bring forth the letter from 
Hutchinson, he found that no such letter had come, and 
that the letter actually received related to another mat- 
ter. This mistake of the noble lord did not tend to 
smooth his temper, and, changing his ground, he went 
on to say, that no colonial assembly had any right to ap- 
point an agent, by their own vote, independently of the 
governor, and that no colonial agents would thenceforth 
be regarded, unless appointed with the consent of the 
colonial governors ; that he should not yield that pomt; 
and that if he was not supported in his determmation, 
his office might be taken from him as soon as it was 
thought fit. To all these declarations, which were made 
with great heat, Franklin coolly replied, that, as the 
business intrusted to these agents was the people's, no 
consent was thought necessary on the part of a governor, 
37 



434 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

who was himself but an agent of the king, and did not 
represent the people. During this dialogue the noble 
lord worked himself into such a passion that he became 
very insolent ; so that when Franklin took back his cre- 
dentials, (which had not been even looked into,) he re- 
marked, in a tone of indignation which he did not wish 
wholly to repress, that he believed it was ** of no great 
importance whether his appointment was acknowledged 
or not, for," said he, "I have not the least idea that an 
agent can, at present, be of any use to any of the colo- 
nies ; and I shall, therefore, give your lordship no fur- 
ther trouble" — and therewith left the chafing secretary. 

It is easy to see that Lord Hillsborough's way for ap- 
pointing agents, only by acts of assembly requiring the 
assent of the king's governors, would soon render such 
agents worthless to the colonies, by making them the mere 
tools of executive authority. Such a scheme, taken in 
connexion with that of rendering the governors wholly 
independent of the people of the colonies, by permanent 
salaries fixed by the crown, but paid out of the revenues 
collected from the same people, whose obedience was to 
be enforced by British troops quartered upon them, 
would shortly make assemblies superfluous, by placing 
all actual power in the hands of the king's oflRcers. This 
policy of multiplying crown officers is noticed by Frank- 
lin in a letter to the Massachusetts committee of corre- 
spondence, dated May 15th, 1771, in which he traces the 
progress of aggression and resistance — of official rapa- 
city and insolence, and of popular resentment and com- 
bination — finally to result in the bloody struggle of war 
— with a clearness of vision, a particularity and accura- 
cy, more like history than prediction. 

Early in the summer of 1771, Franklin visited several 
parts of England. On one of these excursions he passed 
three weeks with the family of Dr. Shipley, bishop of 



VISITS IRELAND AND SCOTLAND. 435 

St. Asaph, then residing in Hampshire ; and it was 
while there that he wrote the first portion of his autobi- 
ography, extending it to the year 1731. In August of 
the same year he travelled through Wales, Ireland, and 
Scotland. During his stay in Dublin, the Irish Parlia- 
ment assembled, and he was treated with much distinc- 
tion by leading men of both parties. At a great dinner 
given by the lord-lieutenant, Franklin met Lord Hills- 
borough, who, much to his surprise, was uncommonly 
civil ; and pressed him and his fellow-traveller, Mr. Jack- 
son, when they should proceed on their journey for the 
north of Ireland, to call on him. They did so, and were 
most hospitably entertained by that very capricious no- 
bleman. In Scotland, he visited Glasgow, passed seve- 
ral days with Lord Kames, at his residence near Stir- 
ling, and stayed near three weeks in Edinburgh, as the 
guest of Mr. Hume, gratified with the attentions he re- 
ceived and with the general character of society in the 
Scottish capital. 

At the opening of 1772, Franklin thought seriously of 
returning to America. In a letter of January 30th, to 
his son, he speaks of his strong desire to be at home; of 
his age, and the infirmities which might reasonably be 
anticipated at his age, being then nearly sixty-seven, and 
of the importance of arranging his private aff'airs before 
his death. He saw, moreover, no disposition in Parlia- 
ment to intermeddle any further, for a time at least, 
with the colonies; and that, even should he return to 
England again, he might be absent for a year without 
prejudice to colonial interests. The desire of his friends, 
however, that he should not leave while Parliament was 
in session, the arrival of pew despatches from America, 
and particularly the retirement of Lord Hillsborough 
from office, which shortly after took place, induced him 
to defer his return. 



436 I-IFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Lord Hillsborough's resignation of his post as secre- 
tary for the colonies and president of the board of trade, 
is ascribed to his having been defeated in a favorite 
plan, in the privy council, through the agency of Frank- 
lin. Some years before, a scheme had been broached 
for establishing a new colony in the Ohio country, 
and an application for a grant of territory for the pur- 
pose had been made on behalf of an association, at the 
head of which was Thomas Walpole. To this grant 
Lord Hillsborough was strongly opposed, as it conflicted 
with a project of his own to prevent the extension of the 
colonial settlements beyond the Alleganies and the sour- 
ces of such streams as flow into the Atlantic. When 
the petition for the Walpole grant, as it was called, 
came before the board of trade, to be considered and 
reported to the privy council, Lord Hillsborough strenu- 
ously opposed it, and made a report to that effect, which 
the board adopted and sent, with the petition, to the 
council, which had the ultimate disposal of all such mat- 
ters. Before the petition was acted on by the council, 
Franklin prepared a reply to the report, exposing its fal- 
lacies and presenting so full and masterly an argument 
in favor of the petition, that the council was convinced 
by it and made the grant. At this decision Lord Hills- 
borough took umbrage and resigned his office. 

The policy of encouraging western settlements had 
been urged by Franklin many years before, particularly 
in his celebrated Canada pamphlet, which embraced 
many of the leading considerations presented in favor of 
this grant. But though this plan of colonizing beyond 
the Alleganies was now sanctioned by his majesty's 
council, yet the execution of it was so delayed, that the 
revolution put an end to the whole enterprise. 

During the same year, the Royal Society, at the sug- 
gestion of the ministry, appointed a committee to visit 



PURFLEET. 437 

the extensive public magazines for storing powder, at 
Purfleet, in the vicinity of London, with the view of 
recommending the best mode of protecting them from 
lightning. The committee consisted of five of the most 
eminent electricians of the society, of whom Franklin 
was one ; and he drew the report, which recommended the 
use of pointed conductors. To satisfy the committee of 
the correctness of the principles on w^hich he based his 
recommendation, he performed a set of experiments ; 
and the result was, that all his associates united with 
him in signing the report, except Mr. Wilson, who was 
in favor of rods ending with knobs. The principles 
applicable to both forms having been already stated, it 
needs only be said here that pointed rods were preferred 
for the very reason urged against them ; that is, inas- 
much as they attract the electric element further than 
knobs, they act upon it at a greater distance, drawing it 
off gradually, without overcharging the rod, which thus 
conducts it safely to the ground; whereas blunt rods, by 
permitting the nearer approach of the element before 
acting on it, are liable to receive it in too great quanti- 
ties for the safe transmission of it to the earth. 

Though Franklin was unable to advance the political 
business with which he had been charged, yet his posi- 
tion, in other respects, was very agreeable. His great 
abilities and illustrious character brought around him 
the distinguished men of the times ; and he moved in the 
most enlightened and respectable circle of society. Men 
of learning from the continent uniformly brought intro- 
ductions to him ; foreign diplomatists cultivated his ac- 
quaintance ; and in August, 1772, the Royal Academy 
at Paris elected him one of its foreign associates — an 
honor the more marked, from the fact that the whole 
number of its associates of that class was restricted to 
eight. 

37* 



438 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

With the commencement of 1773, however, colonial 
afiairs attracted renewed attention. The British gov- 
ernment had recently adopted the policy of fixing the 
salaries of the colonial governors, judges, and other offi- 
cers, paying them from the revenue supplied by those 
very taxes which were levied without the consent of 
the colonies. This new step gave great dissatisfaction 
to the Americans. It was removing their only hold on 
the good-will or the personal interest of the crown offi- 
cers, who, while they received their salaries from the 
colonies, were supplied with a powerful motive to exer- 
cise their functions with a more discreet and just regard 
to the rights of the people within their jurisdiction. Such 
was the excitement produced by this new measure, par- 
ticularly in Massachusetts, that the assembly of that col- 
ony, and the people of all the towns in town-meeting, 
passed resolutions and adopted petitions, in which they 
remonstrated against it in the strongest and boldest lan- 
guage. These proceedings were sent to Franklin, as 
agent of the colony, with instructions to lay them before 
the privy council. 

Lord Dartmouth, who had succeeded the earl of Hills- 
borough as colonial secretary, being the minister with 
whom colonial business was transacted, Franklin not only 
placed the proceedings mentioned in his hands, but he 
had them printed in a pamphlet, for general circulation, 
with a preface from his own pen, explaining, in a brief 
historical sketch, to use his own words, ** the grounds of 
a dissension, that possibly may, sooner or later, have 
consequences interesting to all." 

In the course of 1773, Franklin published two re- 
markable pieces, one entitled, " Rules for reducing a 
great Empire to a small one;" and the other, "An 
Edict by the King of Prussia ;" both relating to the 
controversy between Great Britain and America, and 



^ 



BRITISH CLAIMS BURLESQUED. 439 

both written in a vein of irony not surpassed in pungent 
sarcasm since the days of Swift, yet presenting, at the 
same time, the argument against the policy pursued by 
the British government, with equal force and adroitness. 
In the former piece he digests the obnoxious acts of the 
royal government, into the form of rules to be observed 
for the purpose mentioned, and shows how certain they 
are to accomplish that purpose, by stating, in the form 
of necessary consequences, what had actually taken place 
in the colonies, their existing condition, the character 
and tendency of opinion among their people, and the in- 
evitable result. In the edict, he supposes the king'^of 
Prussia to be the head of the German or Saxon race, 
and that England, having been settled by portions of 
that race, who migrated thither under Hengist, Horsa, 
and other leaders, and the settlements thus made having 
long flourished under the protection of Prussia, for 
which protection and the great expense and trouble at- 
tending it, those English colonies had not yet made to 
their gracious sovereign any adequate and just indemnifi- 
cation, his majesty, therefore, imposes export and import 
duties on his British subjects, for the more easy collec- 
tion of which, all British vessels bound to or from any 
part of the globe, are required to touch and unlade at 
Koningsberg ; all manufactures, also, are forbidden 
among his British subjects, even of their own natural 
productions, which must be taken to Prussia to be fab- 
ricated; and, after commanding that all Prussian con- 
victs shall be taken to his British islands for the better 
peopling thereof, his majesty assumes that the regiila- 
tions of his edict will be deemed ** just and reasonable" 
by his *' much-favored colonists in England," inasmuch 
as they had all been copied from various acts of their 
own Parliament (which are distinctly cited), and from 
instructions issued by their own princes, for the ** good 



440 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

government of their own colonies in Ireland and Amer- 
ica;" and the edict concludes with making it high trea- 
son to resist any of its provisions, for which the traitors 
are to be carried in fetters to Prussia, to be tried and 
executed. 

These pieces attracted much attention. Franklin 
was not suspected of being the author of them, except 
by one or two intimate friends ; and he heard them spo- 
ken of occasionally, particularly the Edict, as the se- 
verest piece of satire that had appeared for a long 
time. 

During the summer of 1773, Franklin made an excur- 
sion to the northern counties of England, and while at 
Keswick, in Cumberland, on visiting the shore of the 
beautiful lake called Derwent Water, for the gratifica- 
tion of the gentleman with him, he smoothed its ruffled 
surface with oil. The experiment was easily performed, 
for he usually carried a small quantity of oil in the head 
of a bamboo cane, and a few drops answered the pur- 
pose. But political affairs chiefly engrossed his time 
and thoughts ; and they were fast assuming a more seri- 
ous aspect. The resolutions and remonstrances of the 
assembly and the towns of Massachusetts had given fresh 
energy to the feeling in America. In March, 1773, the 
Virginia house of burgesses appointed a committee of 
correspondence, inviting the other colonies to do the 
same ; and preparation for securing unity of action as 
well as sentiment was everywhere going forward. Be- 
fore the prorogation of Parliament in the summer of the 
same year, the king's answer to the various petitions 
from the colonies, and the haughty tone of that answer, 
served only to give greater firmness to the attitude they 
had taken, for it showed that his majesty had at length 
openly united with Parliament in asserting their right 
to bind the colonies by their laws, ** in all cases whatso- 



FIRMNESS OP THE COLONIES. 341 

ever." In a letter to Mr. Gushing, dated July 7th, 1773, 
Franklin, after stating the substance of the answer, pro- 
ceeds to consider the position in which it placed the 
colonies. He urges, with great force, the necessity of 
united action on their part, and a common assertion of 
their rights ; and without assuming to direct the precise 
form in which they should combine for this purpose, ob- 
serves, that it might be wisest for the colonies, ** in a 
general congress now in peace to be assembled, or by 
means of the correspondence lately proposed, after a 
full and solemn declaration of their rights, to engage 
firmly with each other that they will never grant aid to 
the crown in any general war, till those rights are rec- 
ognised by the king and Parliament," and send their 
declaration to the king. Such a step, he thought, would 
bring the matter to a crisis ; and if force should be used 
to compel obedience, it would only strengthen our union, 
and procure the good opinion of the world. 

Franklin, however, like the wiser and more consider- 
ate of his compatriots, while he would have the rights of 
the colonies boldly asserted and firmly maintained, rec- 
ommended moderate and prudent action. He, as well 
as they, deemed the colonies not yet ripe for an open 
rupture; that a premature struggle would cripple them, 
and delay, in fact, the full establishment of their free- 
dom ; and that if the British government would concede 
their rights and treat them justly, the connexion be- 
tween the two countries could be continued, at least 
for some years longer, to the benefit of both. Such 
counsels were, in tryth, followed by the colonies ; but 
no arguments, no considerations of sound policy, no re- 
spect for charters, no regard for the great principles of 
British constitution itself, as applicable to British sub- 
jects wherever resident, controlled the action of the 
British government ; and events took place on both sides 



442 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

of the Atlantic, in 1774, which gave a still sharper edge 
to existing animosities. 

In December, 1772, a packet of letters was placed in 
Franklin's hands, by an Englishman of high standing, 
whose name has not been made known, but who gave him 
express permission to send them to America. These let- 
ters have been usually referred to as the Hutchinson Let- 
t€7's, and had been written by Hutchinson, while he was 
chief-justice of Massachusetts, by Lieutenant-Governor 
Oliver, and some other tories of Boston, to Thomas 
Whately, secretary to George Grenville, the author of 
the stamp-act, while he was at the head of the British 
cabinet. As the letters were written at Boston, Frank- 
lin, being then agent for Massachusetts, sent them, in 
December, 1772, to Mr. Gushing, speaker of the Mas- 
sachusetts Assembly, stating, in the letter with which he 
transmitted them, that he was not at liberty to tell from 
whom he received them, and that they were neither to 
be printed nor copied, but might be shown to some of 
the leading patriots for their satisfaction, and that those 
very letters had mainly instigated those acts of the Brit- 
ish government which the colonies regarded as their 
principal grievances. 

The letters reached their destination, and after being 
exhibited to various individuals, were laid before the As- 
sembly of Massachusetts, and ultimately printed, by 
order of that body, as being of great public importance, 
and as having been written, as their contents proved, to 
effect public objects. After full consideration of the let- 
ters, the Assembly passed some very pointed resolutions 
in relation to the writers and the public evils produced 
by their instrumentality, and adopted a petition to the 
king, asking that the offices of Hutchinson and Oliver, 
then governor and lieutenant-governor of the colony, 
might be taken from them. 



THE HUTCHINSON LETTERS. 443 

When this affair became public in London, it led to a 
quarrel between Mr. William Whately, brother and ex- 
ecutor of Thomas, to whom it was supposed the letters 
had been addressed, and a Mr. John Temple, who had 
been an intimate friend of Thomas Whately ; and as the 
quarrel threatened a fatal issue, Franklin, to prevent it, 
and to relieve both those gentlemen from the suspicion 
of a breach of trust to which their relations to the 
deceased Thomas Whately had exposed them, sent a 
card, in his own name, to the Public Advertiser, acquit- 
ting them both of all agency in the matter, and avowing 
himself as the person who had obtained and transmitted 
the letters to America, though he still remained faithful 
to the secret of the individual from whom he had re- 
ceived them. 

This magnanimous conduct of Franklin, however, served 
only to bring upon him the whole tribe of ministerial 
writers in fiercer assault than ever ; and it was arranged 
that, when the Massachusetts petition for the removal of 
Hutchinson and Oliver should come before the commit- 
tee of the lords of the privy council, those two function- 
aries should be heard by counsel against the petition. 
It was no part of the reason for this procedure that 
Hutchinson and Oliver were in any danger of removal ; 
for, composed as the council was, they would have been 
safe against the petitions of united America. But the 
real object was to give an opportunity for a direct pub- 
lic attack on Franklin, in the hope of bringing odium 
upon him for his connection with the letters, and thus 
underniining his political influence as a champion of co- 
lonial rights. The person employed for this dishonora- 
ble purpose was the Solicitor-general Wedderburn, (af- 
terward Lord Loughborough,) a man of malignant tem- 
per, and in high repute for his powers of sarcasm and 
bitter invective. And these qualities, to the disgrace, not 



444 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

of Franklin, but of their possessor and those who so 
meanly permitted the employment of them, were allowed 
the utmost license. 

Franklin, though deeply indignant at the coarse in- 
sults heaped upon him and the people he represented, 
bore himself with a steady and composed dignity wor- 
thy of his great character, and the malice of his assail- 
ants recoiled upon themselves in the general disgust ex- 
cited by their conduct. The committee, as a matter of 
course, reported against the petition, denouncing it as 
groundless, scandalous, and seditious, and affirming the 
integrity and honor of the authors of the letters, from 
whom the people they belied had suffered so much in- 
jury. The report was promptly adopted by the privy 
council ; and the next day Franklin was removed from 
the colonial postoffice department, the revenue of which 
he had raised from nothing to nearly three thousand 
pounds yearly, and which, not long after his removal, fell 
to nothing again. Both these proceedings are good spe- 
cimens of the fatuity of the British policy toward the 
colonies ; and, to use the words of a patriot who wit- 
nessed what has just been related, " who can wonder at 
the indignation of the American people, or that the bat- 
tle of Bunker hill was fought in less than eighteen months 
afterward ]" 

The occurrences just related took place in January, 
1774 ; and other events which soon succeeded tended to 
bring the dispute between the two countries rapidly to 
a crisis. Franklin's self-respect, after the ignominious 
treatment he had received, did not permit him to hold 
any further intercourse with the ministry ; and some of 
his friends believed his stay in England involved so much 
hazard to his personal liberty, that they advised him to 
secure his papers and withdraw. But others, friends of 
the colonies, urged him to await the action of the Amer- 



PETITION FROM CONGRESS LORD CHATHAM. 445 

ican congress, which assembled that year, for the first 
time, in Philadelphia ; and in the hope that he might 
still be of some service, though acting only in a private 
capacity, he consented to remain. In December, 1774, 
the petition from Congress was sent to him, with a let- 
ter in which the colonial agents in London were request- 
ed to unite in presenting it. Franklin, BoUan, and Lee, 
however, were the only three who acted. They took it 
to Lord Dartmouth, the colonial secretary, and subse- 
quently, when, with other papers, it had been laid on 
the table of the house of commons, they asked to be 
heard in support of it, at the bar of the house. This was 
denied, however, and the petition was subsequently re- 
jected by a gi'feat majority. A little before leaving 
England, an effort, was made by several of the more 
zealous friends of the colonies, to devise some means of 
conciliation between the British government and the col- 
onies. To this end various interviews were held be- 
tween Franklin, Lord Howe, the earl of Chatham, and 
other eminent whigs ; and Franklin, at the request of 
the principal persons concerned, presented his views, at 
much length and in various forms, of the princi^^les on 
which harmony might be restored and the connexion be- 
tween the two countries permanently settled to the ad- 
vantage of both. This unofficial and private negotiation 
continued for some weeks ; but though the parties en- 
gaged were very sincere, and though Lord Chatham, 
after several conferences with Franklin, prepared a plan 
of conciliation which he moved in the house of lords on 
the 31st of January, 1775, and supported with a power- 
ful speech, yet the hostility of the ministers to the colo- 
nies was so strong that " all availed," says Franklin, **no 
more than the whistling of the winds, and the plan was 
rejected." During the debate, however, Franklin received 
ample compensation for the contumely of Wedderburn. 



446 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Lord Sandwich, one W the ministry, opposed even the 
reception of the plan for consideration ; and having, in 
the course of an intemperate and most unstatesmanlike 
speech against it, made some bitter allusions to Frank- 
lin, who was present. Lord Chatham, in his reply, took 
occasion to say, that, were the settlement of this great 
question devolved on him as the first minister of the gov- 
ernment, he should not hesitate to seek the aid of "a 
person so perfectly acquainted with American affairs as 
the gentleman so injuriously reflected on ; one whom all 
Europe held in high estimation for his knowledge and 
wisdom, and ranked with our Boyles and Newtons ; who 
was an honor, not to the English nation only, but to hu- 
man nature." '* 

Other whig noblemen besides the Lords Chatham and 
Howe, and some even of the tory lords not of the cabi- 
net, regarded Franklin with great respect for his per- 
sonal character not less than for his knowledge; while, 
among the men most eminent at that day for learning and 
philanthropy, his admirers were so numerous as abun- 
dantly to compensate him by their friendship and soci- 
ety for the enmity of the enemies of his country ; and 
with this treasure of esteem and honor gathered from 
every nation in Europe, he left London on the 21st of 
March, 1775, after a continued residence there of a little 
more than ten years, for Philadelphia. 



DEATH OP HIS WIFE. 447 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

DEATH OF HIS WIFE CONGRESS AND PUBLIC BUSINESS 

MISSION TO FRANCE RESIDENCE AT PARIS RE- 
TURN TO AMERICA CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED 

STATES DEATH AND CHARACTER OF FRANKLIN. 

A FEW weeks before sailing from England, the sor- 
rowful news reached Franklin of the death of his wife. 
For several months she had felt her health sinking, and 
on the 14th of December, 1774, she was seized with 
paralysis, which she survived only five days. This event 
filled Franklin with poignant grief. Her good sense 
and native kindness of heart, her discreet management, 
not only of household affairs, but of his business in his 
absence, with her placid and even temper, and her ra- 
tional and sober yet hopeful views of life, had greatly 
endeared her to him, and made his home peculiarly at- 
tractive. In many respects their native qualities and 
traits of character were much alike, and with the solid 
materials for domestic felicity which both were able and 
ever ready to contribute, their forty-four years of wed- 
lock passed in mutual affection and unbroken harmony, 
and the survivor deeply mourned his bereavement. 

Franklin reached home on the evening of May 5th, 
1775 ; and the very next day the Assembly of Pennsyl- 
vania, then in session, appointed him a delegate to the 
second Continental Congress, which was to convene in 
Philadelphia four days after. The people of America 



448 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Lad everywhere become exasperated beyond all further 
forbearance. The blood of their countrymen had been 
wantonly shed by British troops, at Lexington and Con- 
cord, in April, and the call to arms was now ringing 
through the land. 

When Congress met, a few timid men still hesitated at 
the idea of war with so powerful a foe as Great Britain, 
but the great majority were ready and eager for the con- 
flict; and though they consented that one more appeal 
should be made to the justice of the British government, 
by petitioning the king, yet they did so merely to con- 
ciliate their hesitating brethren, while, at the same time, 
they promptly voted to prepare for defence, and pressed 
the preparation with vigor. 

Never before had Franklin been so loaded with pub- 
lic business. The Pennsylvania Assembly made him 
chairman of the committee of safety for that province; 
and Congress placed him at the head of its secret com- 
mittee authorized to procure and distribute arms and 
other munitions of war. A new postoffice establish- 
ment, also, was necessary, and the arduous task of ar- 
ranging it was committed to Franklin alone, with exclu- 
sive authority over the whole subject. The department 
of Indian affairs for the middle colonies was placed un- 
der his superintendence, and he served on the commit- 
tees on commerce, on the organization of a war depart- 
ment, on the terms of treaties to be offered to foreign 
nations, and various others. 

Several of the posts thus assigned to him involved an 
active and extensive correspondence, not only within the 
colonies, but with many persons in foreign countries, 
requiring great caution and an accurate knowledge of 
the channels of communication in Europe, to preserve 
the objects of Congress from becoming known- to a vigi- 
lant enemy almost everywhere present. In the midst of 



i 



HIS VARIOUS LABORS. 449 

all this labor, moreover, feeling as all other reflecting 
men did, the vital importance of some general political 
organization less dependent than Congress then was, on 
the merely spontaneous action of separate colonial As- 
semblies, and endowed with self-sustaining power suffi- 
cient to abide the vicissitudes of the coming struggle, 
Franldin prepared a plan of confederacy, which, on the 
21st of July, 1775, on his own motion, he laid before 
Congress. This plan vested the general powers of the 
proposed confederacy in a single legislative body or 
congress ; and the executive and administrative func- 
tions in a council, to consist of one member from each 
colony, appointed by the Congress. Though the plan 
was not adopted, it brought the subject up, and it may be 
regarded as the germ of the confederation, under which 
the thirteen states subsequently organized themselves. 

In October of the same year Congress sent Franklin, 
with two other members, Thomas Lynch and Benjamin 
Harrison, to consult and arrange with Washington, then 
at the camp in Cambridge, a plan for the maintenance 
of an army ; and on his return he found himself again a 
member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, having been 
elected in Philadelphia in his absence. The imjDortance 
of maintaining a political correspondence with the friends 
of America in Europe, particularly with a view to such 
alliances as might become necessary, was strongly felt in 
Congress, and near the end of November that body or- 
ganized a committee of secret correspondence. For 
this, Franklin's high standing and wide acquaintance in 
Europe peculiarly fitted him ; and being placed on it, he 
opened the intended correspondence in a letter of the 
9th of December, 177.5, to Charles W. F. Dumas, a very 
learned man, particularly versed in the law of nations, 
and a Swiss by birth, with whom Franklin had become 
intimately acquainted in Holland. 
38* 



450 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

Mr. Dumas, in a recWt letter to Franklin, had ex- 
pressed the warmest approval of the cause of the colo- 
nies, and assured him of the general good wishes of 
Europe ; and as he had long resided at the Hague, in 
the midst of distinguished diplomatists from all quarters 
of the continent, Franklin gave him a sketch of the ex- 
isting condition of America, its strength, resources, and 
prospects; suggested that Congress might find it neces- 
sary to seek assistance, or alliances, and requested him 
to ascertain, if he could, what would be the disposition 
of the principal European cabinets in regard to such ap- 
plications, should they be made; urging, at the same 
time, the importance of circumspection, and pointing out 
a safe channel of communication. Mr. Dumas under- 
took the agency proposed, and rendered valuable service 
throughout the struggle for American independence. 

In the spring of 1776, Congress sent Franklin, Charles 
Carroll, and Samuel Chase, on a mission to Canada, 
with power to direct the operations of the American for- 
ces in that jDrovince, and witli the hope of inducing the 
Canadians to unite in the existing struggle for colonial 
rights. But the mission was fruitless ; and when Frank- 
lin got back to Philadelphia, early in June, he found 
Congress occupied with a far more momentous subject. 
This was the declaration of independence. On this 
point public opinion was in advance of the action of 
Congress. This was right. It was wise and just in that 
body to wait for the clear expression of public senti- 
ment, on so grave a question. But that sentiment had 
now become fixed, and Congress acted on it promptly. 
The committee, consisting of Jefferson, Adams, Frank- 
lin, Sherman, and Livingston, appointed in June to 
draw a declaration, reported on the 1st of July; and 
after a debate of three days, the report, as drawn by 
Jefferson, with a few clauses modified at the suggestion 



INTERVIEW WITH LORD HOWE. 451 

of Franklin and Adams, was, on the 4tli, by an almost 
unanimous vote, adopted, declaring the colonies to be 
free and independent states. 

In the preceding May, Congress had proposed to the 
several colonies to remodel their own constitutions, to 
enable them to meet the new exigencies of the country. 
Accordingly, in July a convention, to frame a constitu- 
tion for Pennsylvania, met in Philadelphia, and chose 
Franklin president. Though his labors were divided 
between his various posts, yet his influence in the con- 
vention was weighty, and its ultimate decision in favor of 
a legislature consisting of one house only, is ascribed to 
him. His objections to a legislature with two branches 
were derived partly from what he had seen of colonial 
Assemblies and legislative councils under royal gover- 
nors, and partly from the history of the English Parlia- 
ment. He did not, perhaps, sufficiently appreciate the 
difference between a legislature having one of its 
branches hereditary and constituting a distinct order in 
the state, and one wholly elective, in a commonwealth 
exempted from all the influences, direct and indirect, of 
the hereditary element, as v/ell as from the prerogatives 
and patronage of a king. At any rate, no other instance 
of a legislature consisting of a single house has occurred 
in this country ; and when Pennsylvania, at a subse- 
quent period, reconstructed her constitution, she followed 
the general example. 

Shortly after the declaration of independence by Con- 
gress, Lord Howe arrived in the bay of New York with 
a British fleet; and being commissioned, together with 
his brother, General Howe, to settle the dispute be- 
tween the two countries, if the colonies would return to 
their allegiance, he published a manifesto to that effect, 
and wrote to Franklin, assuring him of his earnest de- 
sire to see harmony restored. A short correspondence 



452 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

ensued between them ; ^^ though Howe was not per- 
mitted to recognise the authority of Congress, yet, as he 
communicated his wish to confer with some of its mem- 
bers on the terms upon which existing dijfficulties might 
be adjusted, that body, early in September, deputed 
Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge, to meet 
him, to learn the nature and extent of his authority, and 
to receive such propositions as he might think fit to 
offer. The meeting took place on Staten Island, and 
though Lord Howe said much of the disposition of the 
king and his ministers to listen to the complaints of the 
colonies and redress their grievances, if they would re- 
turn to their obedience, yet his propositions were unac- 
companied by any distinct pledges of his majesty's good 
faith, and too vague to be relied on. 

Although the interview, in reference to its direct ob- 
ject amounted to nothing, yet, indirectly, the result of 
it was doubtless important: for the publication of the 
whole procedure, which was forthwith ordered by Con- 
gress, showed the American people how idle it was to 
expect anything from the voluntary justice of the British 
government; and that they must look, for the rescue of 
their liberties, only to their own union, courage, and re- 
sources, without which they could neither protect them- 
selves in the outset, nor receive future aid from foreign 
alliances. 

To the means of obtaining such alliances Congress 
now turned its attention. The commerce of the coun- 
try was valuable, and with the offer of that on liberal 
terms, as an equivalent for the assistance needed, a mis- 
sion to France was determined on. The commissioners 
first appointed for this purpose, on the 26th of Septem- 
ber, were Franklin, Silas Dean, and Thomas Jefferson. 
The last, however, declined, and Arthur Lee, of Vir- 
ginia, was put in his place. Mr. Lee and Mr. Dean were 



MISSION TO FRANCE, 453 

both in Europe, the former having been employed sev- 
eral years in England as a colonial agent, and the latter 
having been sent out, in the preceding March, by the 
committee of secret correspondence, with a view to dip- 
lomatic as well as commercial objects ; and Franklin, 
after a boisterous voyage in the United States sloop-of- 
war Reprisal, Captain Wickes, and after escaping from 
the guns of several Britsh cruisers, met them in Paris in 
the latter part of December, 1776. 

With a fame unequalled in brilliancy by that of any 
other man of those times, not only as a philosopher and 
sage, but as a profound political thinker and an un- 
daunted asserter of the rights and liberties of his coun- 
try, Franklin's name was now familiarly known and 
revered throughout all Europe. Portraits of him were 
everywhere multiplied, of all forms and dimensions, from 
the size of life down to the smallest miniatures for snuff- 
boxes and rings, and all, young and old, of all ranks and 
of both sexes, felt it a privilege to obtain admission to 
his presence. Such were the accompaniments of Frank- 
lin's arrival at the capital of France. 

Of the effect produced by Franklin's character, repu- 
tation, and personal appearance, in France, we may cite 
the testimony of an eminent French writer, who repre- 
sents him as accomplishing the objects of his mission, not 
so much by direct negotiation with the court, as by the 
impression he made on the public mind ; for while diplo- 
matic etiquette allowed only occasional interviews with 
ministers of state, he was in constant intercourse with all 
who were distinguished for genius, learning, or social in- 
fluence, and who swayed political opinion. " In him," 
says Lacretelle, the wn-iter alluded to, ** men imagined 
they saw a sage of antiquity, come back to give austere 
lessons and generous examples to the moderns. They 
pei-sonified in him the republic of which he was the rep- 



454 I-IFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKIilN. 

resontative. They regarded his virtues as those of his 
countrymen ; and even judged of their physiognomy by 
the imposing and serene traits of his own. This venera- 
ble man, they said, joined to the demeanor of Phocion 
the spirit of Socrates." To this vivid sketch of the im- 
pression made on French susceptibilities, by the rare 
combination of great talents and splendid reputation, 
with the simple yet dignified manners, plain garb, and 
paternal aspect of the venerable representative of the 
new-born nation, the same writer adds : ** After this pic- 
ture, it would be useless to trace the history of Fratik- 
lin's negotiations with the court of France. His virtues 
and his renown negotiated for him ; and before the sec- 
ond year of his mission had expired, no one conceived it 
possible to refuse fleets and an army to the compatriots 
of Franklin." 

Congress had sent with Franklin a draught of a com- 
mercial treaty, which he had himself, no doubt, helped 
to frame, inasmuch as he was early placed on a com- 
mittee of that body, for the purpose of framing the 
model of such a treaty, and besides offering it to the ac- 
ceptance of the French cabinet, the commissioners were 
instructed to apply for eight ships-of-the-line fully manned 
and equipped ; to purchase arms and other warlike stores ; 
to fit out armed cruisers in the French ports, with the 
permission of the government; and to sound the repre- 
sentatives at Paris of other European cabinets, respect- 
ing their recognition of the independence of the United 
States, and the establishment of commercial relations 
with- them. The expenses of the commissioners and the 
fulfilment of their contracts were to be provided for by 
shipments of produce. 

When the commissioners first met in Paris, the French 
court were not quite ready to take part with their coun- 
try openly. The principal reason for this hesitancy 



POLICY OF THE FRENCH CABINET. 455 

seems to have been the fact that it would instantly pro- 
duce war with Great Britain, for which France, it was 
said, had not yet made sufficient preparation ; and al- 
though the counts de Vergennes and Maurepas, regarded 
as the two most influential members of the French cabi- 
net, held that the interests of France demanded such a 
war, and that it would be unwise to neglect the opportu- 
nity now offered to embark in it, yet some of their col- 
leagues thought differently, and the king himself, it is 
stated, was reluctant to give it his sanction. Besides, 
not a little doubt was still entertained respecting the 
general sentiments of the American people. They had 
not yet, it was urged, given sufficient evidence of their 
firmness, or their determination to persevere, at all haz- 
ards, in maintaining the position they had taken ; the re- 
verses and misfortunes of the campaign of 1776, which 
had just closed with but gloomy prospects for the future, 
might have broken their spirit and crushed their hopes, 
or at least have so far changed their views as to induce 
them, upon some concessions from the British govern- 
ment, to return to their former connection ; and that it 
would be exceedingly imprudent in France to commit 
herself prematurely to a cause thus doubtfully situated. 

But, with all this caution and seeming hesitancy, the 
French cabinet had determined to assist the United 
States, and had, accordingly, soon after Mr. Deane's ar- 
lival at Paris in the preceding July, advanced a million 
livres from the royal treasury. This, however, was done 
privately, by placing the money in the hands of M. Beau- 
marchais, who, in concert with Mr. Deane, made large 
shipments of military stores to America. 

Such was the position of things, when, on the 28th of 
December, 1776, seven days after Franklin reached 
Paris, Count de Vergennes, the minister of foreign af- 
fairs, gave the American commissioners their first audi- 



456 LIFE OP BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

enco at Versailles. After an interview every w^ay grat- 
ifying, they left with the count a copy of the treaty they 
had been directed to propose ; and, at his request, a me- 
morial was delivered to him a few days afterward, drawn 
up by Franklin, and exhibiting the state of affairs in 
America, the sentiments of the people, the resources of 
the country, the value of her commerce, and the views 
of Con stress. 

Though the application for ships-of-the-line was not 
complied with, yet a further sum of two million livres, 
to be drawn quarterly, was soon placed, in the same 
private manjier as before, at the disposal of the commis- 
sioners, with the intimation that repayment was not ex- 
pected till after the war ; and they were also permitted 
to make a special contract v/ith the farmers-general of 
the revenue for another million, to he met by remittances 
of tobacco. The money thus furnished was expended in 
purchasing and sending to America clothing, arms, and 
other munitions of war, and in refitting American cruis- 
ers. Those cruisers, moreover, brought many prizes into 
French ports, the sale of which v/as winked at, till the 
British embassador remonstrated against it ; and then, 
although the commissioners were gravely admonished on 
the subject, and put to some trouble in detaining vessels 
ready to sail with stores for America, or in transferring 
their lading to other vessels, yet this interposition was 
not so peremptory as materially to impede the despatch 
of suj^plies. 

In March, 1777, Franklin received from Congress a 
commission as minister to Spain. A little money had 
been secretly obtained in that quarter ; but, on learning 
from the Spanish embassador at Paris that the court of 
Spain, though friendly, was not yet disposed to aj^pear 
in open alliance with the United States, he deferred act- 
ing under his new commission further than to communi- 



TREATIES WITH FRANCE. 457 

cate to that court, through its embassador, the fact of his 
appointment and the main articles of the treaty he was 
instructed to propose, which contemplated a triple alli- 
ance for repairing the losses of Spain and France in the 
previous war, by restoring to the former her footing in 
Florida, and to the latter her possessions in the West 
Indies, while the United States were to secure their in- 
dependence and the free navigation of the Mississippi. 

The results of the campaign of 1777 in America, how- 
ever, put an end to the reserve and hesitancy of the 
French court, and changed the aspect of negotiation. 
The news of Burgoyne's surrender reached Paris early 
in December; and on the 6th of February, 1778, the in- 
dependence of the United States was acknowledged, and 
two treaties, one of amity and commerce and the other 
of alliance, were signed at Versailles by the French min- 
ister and the American commissioners. Writing a few 
days after to a friend in America, to congratulate him on 
the completion of the treaties, Franklin says of the for- 
mer, that it was framed " on the plan proposed by Con- 
crress, with some good additions;" and of the latter, that 
it " guaranties to the United States their sovereignty and 
independence absolute and unlimited, with all the pos- 
sessions they may have at the close of the war," while 
they ** guaranty in return the possessions of France in the 
West Indies;" and that "the great principle in both is a 
perfect equality and reciprocity : no advantage to be de- 
manded by France, or privileges in commerce, which the 
States may not grant to any and every other nation." 

As the execution of the treaties drew after it, of course, 
the official and public recognition of the American com- 
missioners in their diplomatic character, they were, on 
the 20th of March, presented in due form to the king, 
and were received thenceforward at the French court as 
the representatives of a sovereign state. The presenta- 
39 



458 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

tion of no embassador^! royalty, however splendid in 
garb and retinue, could have produced a sensation so 
lively as that w^hich accompanied on this occasion the plain 
republican envoy Benjamin Franklin. " His straight, un- 
powdered hair," says Madame Campan — "his round 
hat, and his brown cloth coat, formed a singular con- 
trast with the laced and embroidered coats, and pow- 
dered and perfumed heads of the courtiers of Versailles." 
And another French writer in describing the scene says : 
** His age, his venerable aspect, the simplicity of his 
dress, everything fortunate and remarkable in his life, 
contributed to excite public attention. The clapping of 
hands and other expressions of joy indicated that warmth 
of enthusiasm which the French are more susceptible of 
than any other people, and the charm of which is en- 
hanced to the object of it by their politeness and agreea- 
ble manners. After his audience he crossed the courtyard 
on his way to the office of the minister of foreign affairs. 
The multitude waited for him in the passage, and greeted 
him with acclamations ; and he met with a similar re- 
ception wherever he appeared in Paris." 

The execution of the treaties was quickly followed by 
the appointment of M. Gerard embassador from the court 
of France to the United States, who sailed in April with 
a fleet under Count d'Estaing, with whom also Mr. Deane, 
who had been replaced by John Adams, returned to 
America. The new alliance, moreover, together with 
the existing aspect of the war, so far influenced the Brit- 
ish ministers, that they sent out commissioners to the 
United States, with professions of a sincere desire to re- 
store harmony between the two counti-ies, upon terms 
advantageous to both. But, however willing they may 
have been to escape from a costly and odious war, it was 
evident that their notions of justice, of American rights 
and British supremacy, were little improved. Indeed, 



BRITISH AGENTS. 459 

the only propositions they had to offer were so leavened 
with the old ideas of royal prerogative and parliamentary 
omnipotence, as to be wholly inadmissible; and they 
served rather to exasperate than reconcile those to whom 
they were addressed. 

Besides this formal mission to Congi'ess, various efforts 
were made, on the part of the British ministry, by the 
employment of secret emissaries, to entangle Franklin 
in private negotiation, and thus through him to embroil 
his country with the French court by exciting suspicion 
and sowing dissension. But Franklin's sagacity at once 
detected the motive of these movements ; while his 
straight-forward sincerity, his steadfast integrity, and his 
close intimacy with the French minister, between whom 
and himself, so far as the interests of America were con- 
cerned, there were no secrets, baffled every effort to pro- 
duce jealousy, or to weaken in the slightest degree the 
confidence they reposed in each other. Indeed, the wisdom 
and sound policy of perfect frankness, and scorn of every- 
thing like intrigue, was never more triumphantly vindi- 
cated, in diplomatic intercourse, than by the influence 
which Franklin acquired in the court of France. 

Of all these clandestine attempts to draw Franklin 
into the schemes of British intrigue, the most remarka- 
ble, alike for profligacy and folly, was made by a person, 
doubtless an Englishman, but who styled himself Charles 
de Weissenstein, in along communication, dated at Brus- 
selc in July, 1778, but written probably in Paris. He 
attempted to intimidate, by magnifying the power of 
Great Britain ; to bribe, by presenting the prospect of 
honors and wealth ; and to propitiate, by professions of 
personal admiration and reverence. He insisted that no 
British ministry would ever recognise the independence 
of the United States, and that the war therefore would 
be continued till America was ruined. To prevent the 



460 LIFE OF IJENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

unavailing waste of life and treasure, he proposed a plan 
of conciliation and government, which, though it asserted 
the unlimited authority of Parliament over the colonies, 
would, for the sake of peace and commer'ce, make such 
concessions in regard to the exercise of that authority as 
would be equitable and satisfactory ; and the rewards 
which Franklin, Washington, and the other leading Amer- 
ican patriots, were to receive, for restoring peace and hap- 
piness to their country and prosperity to the British em- 
pire, were places, pensions, and peerages. This scheme 
of treachery and corruption bore so many tokens of min- 
isterial origin, that Franklin condescended to reply to it, 
for the purpose of exposing the folly of the plan of gov- 
ernment it set forth, and he treated the proffered honors 
with cutting sarcasm and contemptuous derision. This 
reply closed the correspondence with M. Charles de Weis- 
senstein. 

Besides these secret agents, others in England, of a 
different class, the personal friends of Franklin, men of 
probity and honor, opposed to the measures which brought 
on the war, and, still faithful to their principles, pressed 
him in their letters for propositions which might, in his 
judgment, serve as a basis for overtures of peace, and a 
settlement of the points in controversy, on terms consist- 
ent with the honor of all, and advantageous to both coun- 
tries. The most assiduous and persevering of these cor- 
respondents was David Hartley, a member of Parlia- 
ment, a sensible, intelligent, benevolent man, whose ijao- 
tives Franklin knew to be pure, and who sought only the 
public good. But neither Mr. Hartley nor, indeed, any 
other Englishman, could fully comprehend the troe posi- 
tion and interests of the United States, or the extent to 
which their people had been injured and alienated by 
the acts and agents of the British government ; and all 
his plans of pacification involved so many of the old 



RECOMMENDATIONS LAFAYETTE. 461 

views of colonial dependence and British supremacy as 
to be wholly inadmissible. Franklin laid open these ob- 
jections in perfect good temper toward his friend, but in 
the most explicit terms, and showed him that the British 
government could have peace and commerce with the 
United States only as with a sovereign and independent 
nation, and on terms of entire reciprocity. But though 
Mr. Hartley found his efforts to move Franklin from his 
position in reference to this subject wholly unavailing, 
yet it is due to him to state that, at Franklin's request, 
he inquired into the condition of American prisoners in 
England, and not only applied such money as Franklin 
was able to send over for their relief, but collected among 
his acquaintances other sums for the same benevolent 
purpose, and was active and serviceable in facilitating 
their exchange. 

In September, 1778, to avoid the needless expense of 
three commissioners in France, Congress appointed 
Franklin sole minister, and Mr. Adams returned home, 
leavingMr. Lee, the other commissioner, still in Europe. 
Almost immediately on Frankhn's arrival at Paris he 
had been beset with applications for letters in behalf of 
miX^itary men of every rank and character, from almost 
every corner of Europe, seeking service in America. 
These applications were so zealously pressed by such 
an array of recommendations, that Franklin's good-nature 
led him, in the outset, to a somewhat overready compli- 
ance ; and though he soon perceived the necessity of cau- 
tion, yet the annoyance continued during the whole war. 
He assisted, however, in commending to the good-will 
and respect of Congress and of Washington one person 
who never gave cause to regret the confidence reposed in 
him — the then young marquis de Lafayette. This name, 
it is true, now stands in history on a page of light, and any 
tribute to it here is superfluous. Still, it is pleasant to 
39* 



462 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

look back at the first public notice of one whose memory 
is enshrined in every American heart. " He is gone to 
America," says Franklin, " in a ship of his own, accom- 
panied by several officers of distinction, to serve in our 
armies. He is exceedingly beloved ; and we are satis- 
fied that the respect which may be shown him will be 
serviceable to our affairs here, by pleasing not only his 
powerful relations and the court, but the whole French 
nation." 

At that early period, Congress not having yet organ- 
ized a consular system, numberless transactions arising 
from the details of commerce, or connected with the dis- 
posal of prizes taken at sea, and with the fitting out of 
cruisers in French ports — matters usually managed by 
consuls — devolved on Franklin, and, added to his more 
exclusively diplomatic duties, subjected him to a much 
greater amount of labor than is demanded of an Ameri- 
can plenipotentiary in these more systematic times. This 
is made very manifest in his correspondence with Con- 
gress, through the successive presidents of that body and 
its committee on foreign affairs. This correspondence 
not only shows how assiduously, and with what patriotic 
solicitude as well as ability, he watched over the great 
interests committed to his charge, but it demonstrates, 
as we believe any candid reader, after an attentive peru- 
sal of it, will admit, that no other man could have pro- 
moted those interests so effectually, or have secured for 
his country so much aid from France, or so much respect 
and good-will throughout Europe, as did Franklin. In- 
deed, from his first appearance at Paris, in a diplomatic 
capacity, he may well be said to have been substantially 
the representative of the United States, not only to the 
French court, but to all the courts of continental Europe. 
And this resulted, not merely from the fact that the court 
of France was the grrent wheel, as Arthur Lee called it, 



HIS MODESTY AND SENSE OF RIGHT. 463 

wliich moved the courts of other nations, but it was also 
in no small degree the natural consequence of Franklin's 
great name and European reputation — of the universal 
homage paid to him for his splendid career in philoso- 
phy, and the distinguished ability and rtanly boldness 
w^ith which he had, while colonial agent in London, de- 
fined and asserted the political rights of the American 
people, and resisted the aggressions of the British gov- 
ernment upon their liberties. 

The general estimation of Franklin in Europe, not only 
as a philosopher, nor merely as one among many faithful 
and illustrious assertors of the liberties of his countrymen, 
but as pre-eminently the founder of their freedom, can 
not be more strikingly exemplified than by the following 
incident : An artist in Paris, having designed an engra- 
ving to commemorate the independence of the United 
States, submitted his design to Franklin's inspection and 
proposed to dedicate it to him. The principal symbol 
in the piece was, it seems, the figure of Franklin in the 
garb of a Roman senator, with his name inscribed be- 
neath. To this he promptly and flatly refused his assent, 
because it ascribed to him exclusively the freedom of 
America, and he insisted that the figure should be made to 
symbolize Congress, and the print be dedicated to that 
body; for, otherwise, said he in a note to the artist, "it 
would be unjust to the numbers of wise and brave men 
who, by their arms and counsels, have shared in the en- 
terprise and contributed to its success, at the hazard of 
their lives and fortunes." Such were the modesty, mag- 
nanimity, and living sense of justice, of Franklin. 

The elevation and generosity of his nature, indeed, his 
true wisdom, were well illustrated by his sentiments in 
regard to privateering, against the toleration of which 
he expressed himself in the strongest terms, and proposed 
that the nations of Europe should combine to put it down 



464 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

by express stipulations in their treaties with each other; 
and, as a further extension of the same humane policy, 
demanded by the whole spirit of Christian civilization, 
he also proposed that, in war as in peace, all people, to 
whatever country they might belong, belligerent or neu- 
tral, while engaged by land or sea in producing or trans- 
porting food or anything else needed for the support and 
comfort of life, or the advancement of peaceful pursuits, 
should remain unmolested. Both these principles should, 
he held, be incorporated into the general law of nations, 
not only as being alike humane and just toward the indi- 
viduals and families directly affected by them, but as be- 
ing certain also to lessen the frequency of war by destroy- 
ing the hope of plunder. 

Similar proofs of his philanthropy and abhorrence of 
rapine and violence in every form, were furnished in the 
passports which, as minister plenipotentiary, he issued, 
to protect from American cruisers the vessels annually 
sent from England, with food and other supplies for the 
Moravian settlements on the coast of Labrador; and in 
doing the same thing for the vessels under the celebrated 
navigator Captain James Cook, who had, before the war, 
been sent on a voyage of discovery, and was supposed 
to be now on his way home. No man ever possessed in 
larger measure than Franklin the desire to encourage 
every enterprise to advance knowledge, diffuse the spirit 
of benevolence, and liberalize the policy of governments ; 
and the last-named act of magnanimous humanity drew 
from the English board of trade a vote of acknowledgment, 
together with an elegant copy of Cook's Voyages, and 
the splendid collection of plates belonging to it, accom- 
panied by a courteous letter from Lord Howe, stating 
that the gift was made with the king's approbation. 

A few days after reaching Paris, Franklin took up his 
residence at Passy, some two or three miles out of the 



HIS RESIDENCE AT PASSY. ^ 465 

city, and overlooking the river Seine. There, as he 
wrote to an old friend, " in a fine house, in a neat vil- 
lage, on high ground, with a large garden to walk in," 
he dwelt during the whole of his mission to France. It 
was a pleasant situation, and among his neighbors were 
several families of great respectability and worth, where 
he soon became a cherished and honored inmate, and 
where he enjoyed habitual intercourse with a large circle 
comprising many of the most cultivated, distinguished, 
and agreeable people of both sexes, that French society 
could furnish. At Passy he wrote several of his best 
tracts on political topics, besides several valuable papeis 
on philosophical subjects, particularly one, which was 
read before the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, on 
the aurora horealis, stating his reasons for supposing that 
splendid phenomenon to be a result of electrical action. 
At Passy, too, he wrote, for the entertainment of the cir- 
cle of friends just mentioned, some of his most sprightly 
and instructive humorous pieces, among which were " The 
Whistle," " The Ephemera," " The Morals of Chess," 
and others. The hospitality, affectionate respect, and at- 
tention, he received from the families referred to, soothed 
him under his increasing infirmities, and cheered him un- 
der the heavy burden of his varied and laborious public 
duties. 

The details of his diplomatic labors are far too volu- 
minous to be recounted here. History has taken charge 
of them; and it is enough to say, in this place, that, mul- 
tiplied, burdensome, and important, as they were, he per- 
formed them with the ability and fidelity which charac- 
terized his long career of public service, and with a skill 
and success which v/on for him the spontaneous testimony 
alike of the firm and clear-headed John Jay, then minis- 
ter to Spain, and of the enlightened and high-minded 
count de Vergennes, the French secretary. Congress, 



4G6 LIFE or BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

also, declined complying with his request, made in March, 
1781, to be recalled, and placed him shortly after on the 
commission with Adams, Jay, and Laurens, to negotiate 
peace, overtures for which were first made on the part 
of the British cabinet in January, 1782 ; and, after a pro- 
tracted negotiation, a preliminary treaty, recognising the 
independence of the United States and fixing their bound- 
aries, was signed in November of the same year; and a 
further negotiation, for the settlement of other matters, 
terminated in a definitive treaty, substantially the same 
as the other, and executed at Paris, September 3, 1783. 

The independence and sovereignty of the United States 
being thus established, Mr. Jay returned home, and Mr. 
Jefferson was sent out to act with Franklin and Adams, 
in the negotiation of treaties with other nations. But 
though the cabinets of Europe, through their embassa- 
dors at Paris, expressed a disposition to maintain ami- 
cable relations with the United States, no treaty was ac- 
tually made except with Prussia. This treaty gave its 
sanction to Franklin's doctrine against privateering and 
the spoliation of private property ; and putting his signa- 
ture to it was his last act as the diplomatic representa- 
tive of his country. 

Franklin left Paris on the 12th of July, 1785. His de- 
parture was accompanied by the most expressive testi- 
monials of regret from the court as well as from a nu- 
merous train of private friends, including men of the 
hio-hest rank and most eminent worth : and on the 14th 

o 

of September he found himself once more in Philadel- 
phia. His return was greeted with every mark of per- 
sonal regard and public respect. The Assembly of Penn- 
sylvania, then sitting, addressed him as one " whose ser- 
vices not only merited the thanks of the present genera- 
tion, but would be recorded in history to his immortal 
honor ;" and other public bodies paid him similar tributes. 



HIS LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 467 

He was now rapidly approaching the end of his eigh- 
tieth year, and was looking only for repose, exempt, for 
the remainder of his days, from all further public cares. 
But he could not, even yet, be allowed to retire. Very 
shortly after his return the Assembly and executive coun- 
cil of Pennsylvania elected him governor of the state for 
the ensuing year ; and the choice was renewed for three 
years in succession, which was as long as the constitution 
permitted,^till after an interval of four years. 

His domestic situation and the occupation of his pri- 
vate hours might be beautifully depicted by many ex- 
tracts from his own letters written in the brief period 
still left to him. A few words, however, will give the 
spirit of the whole. He lived in his own house, with his 
daughter and her children about him to gratify his affec- 
tions ; with conversation, books, and his garden, to recre- 
ate him ; and with the unalterable esteem of his country 
to crown his long toils in her service ; and though con- 
scious that his life on earth must soon close, yet he wrote 
to a venerable friend — " I can cheerfully, with filial con- 
fidence, resign my spirit to that great and good Parent 
of mankind who created it, and who has so graciously 
protected and prospered me from my birth to the present 
hour." It was in this spirit that, in the federal conven- 
tion of 1787 — the last national body in which he sat — 
he moved to open its daily sittings with prayer, declaring 
that the longer he lived the more proofs he saw of God's 
government in human affairs. 

Similar sentiments abound in his letters, but the most 
formal statement of them is given in his reply, on this 
subject, in March, 1790, to President Stiles, of Yale col- 
lege. There he explicitly states his belief in God, as 
creator and governor of all things, and entitled to wor- 
ship ; in doing good to each other as our best service to 
him ; in the immortality of the soul, and a future state of 



468 LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

retribution ; that while he had some doubts of the divinity 
of Jesus, yet he believed his system of religion and mo- 
rality as left by him the best ever taught; and that foi ' 
himself he relied solely on the goodness of God, without 
the slightest idea of meriting it. 

Useful to the end, Franklin gave his remaining strength 
to the cause of education and freedom ; and some of hi& 
latest efforts were made for the abolition of negro-slavery. 
His malady, the stone, kept him for his last year chiefly 
on his bed ; and he continued thus till the end of March, 
1790, when he was seized with severe pain in the chest 
and fever, ending in abscess of the lungs, the bursting of 
which soon proved fatal, and he expired April 17, 1790, 
the anniversary of his birth-day. 

During his severe sufferings from the pain in his chest, 
when a groan escaped him, *' he would observe," says his 
physician, *' that he was afraid he did not bear them as 
he ought; acknowledging his grateful sense of the many 
blessings he had received from the Supreme Being, who 
had raised him from small beginnings to such high rank 
and consideration among men." Another friend, speak- 
ing of his long confinement, says : " No repining, no 
peevish expression, ever escaped him ; and upon every 
occasion he displayed the clearness of his intellect and 
the cheerfulness of his temper." Thus died Benjamin 
Franklin, full of years as of honors. Thus terminated 
a life as remarkable for its early development of the high- 
est traits of character in the midst of the laborious occu- 
pations of a tradesman, as for the achievements in phi- 
losophy and the services to his country, which rendered 
it illustrious, and which has left the richest lessons of 
wisdom to every succeeding generation. 

THE END. 



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^RARY OF CONGRESS 




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1 769 956 m 



